


Brief Lives

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: And want to kill everyone else, Dark Charles, Dark(er) Erik, Everyone's insane and traumatised, M/M, Warning: blood and gore, uploaded for archival purposes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:49:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik thinks he's going to seduce, interrogate and murder some nondescript CIA intelligence agent, and winds up biting more than  he can chew. Charles is not keen on being murdered, he doesn't favor interrogations, and he's certainly not willing to be seduced. That he's not cooperating is midly put.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is actually fully completed in LJ, and I'm only putting it up here because I already put everything else up here, so I might as well. I'll be putting one chapter up per day per request of a friend.

The door falls closed behind Erik, pulled by a tight, newly-installed spring. Erik can feel the coiled metal, shiny and young. 

He looks around, sliding his hands in the pockets of his black slacks and communicating vague, idle pleasantness as he makes his way to the bar. He knows how to manipulate body language to make people feel what he wants them to feel, and right now he wants them to feel like he’s nothing special to look at. This he has achieved by wearing a simple, blue polo shirt over black slacks, and a non-descript black leather jacket. Nothing remarkable at all. 

It’s a typical Oxford bar, filled to the brim with students unwinding after a long week of finals. Erik’s timed this _just right_ —if he does this correctly, his prey should be falling right into him, drunk and seeking distraction after a period of stress. It should be easy a breathing, but he has to be careful—the bar is a University bar and therefore open-minded enough, rather favorable to experimentation, but still he shouldn’t overdo it. He’ll have to snare his prey as subtly as possible. 

He doesn’t know exactly what this boy looks like—all he could get out of his source was that he was slender, more a dancer than an athlete, and he had red lips and startlingly blue eyes, ‘impossible to miss’. 

But Erik looks around as he waits for his pint and no one strikes out as peculiar to him at all. He makes a round of the bar, looking and assessing the patrons as well as making sure to know the terrain. There are some rather beautiful girls that stand out to him, but he is certain he is looking for a boy, and he can’t risk losing this lead now. He’s come a long way following breadcrumbs—nearly all the way from Argentina. 

This boy, though, his Charles Xavier—he could prove to be uniquely useful, if he can twist him around right. What the project he’s actually in with the CIA consists of, Erik is unsure. But there’s a branch of it he is very much interested indeed; the one dedicated to searching out what they call gifted people. 

The word ‘mutants’ is not on the official reports. 

Erik knows for sure this branch has not yet yielded any results, for which he is grateful, but he also knows that the people working on this project know where one Sebastian Shaw is. 

Shaw is who Erik is after—but taking Xavier out of the way in the meantime, to make sure he doesn’t locate any mutants, is not at all a loss of his valuable time. There’s no reason to allow some meddling human to go unchecked. 

It’s not until about an hour and a half later, when Erik is beginning to lose his patience and suspect that perhaps his mark decided to stay in tonight after all, that Xavier actually shows up. 

There is one thing to be said: the boy _is_ impossible to miss. 

Dark, wavy hair tumbles freely over his forehead, a stark contrast against his pale skin and his eyes are a shocking shade of electric blue, wide and open, glinting with intelligence borderline dangerous. There is a soft smile curving too-red lips—and it widens as soon as the boy spots his friends, across the room not far from Erik. 

Perfect. 

Xavier makes his way to the table where his friends are waving their hands and cat-calling him, noticing his seemingly unusual clothes—black slacks, a dark-blue button-up beneath a dark-grey sweater and a well-cut, elegant tweed coat. 

“Quiet down,” Xavier laughs, brushing hair out of his ridiculous eyes. “You know Professor Maxwell likes his assistants sharply dressed for finals, yes? I’m officially off-duty now, though.” 

“You heart-breaker,” one of his friends laughs loudly. “I can see the headlines tomorrow, ‘trail of dead girls found near OU, seemingly dead of heat-stroke’. Whoa, watch where you point those!” he brings up his hands in defense when Xavier gives him a look, protecting himself from the man’s eyes. 

“You look good,” a redheaded girl says with a smile, flipping back her long braid flirtatiously. 

“I look better with a pint,” Xavier replies, shrugging out of his coat and throwing it on his friends’ face. “I look positively dashing with a martini. And if you give me a single-malt, I’ll have the world at my feet in no time flat. Which is it, then?” 

“Single-malt, I think,” the girl smiles. 

This is trouble—if Xavier is all for women it will complicate things. He doesn’t behave at all like someone who might be interested in what Erik has to offer, although looks can most certainly be deceiving. Besides, students are given to experimentation, and Erik knows exactly what to do to attract a man with Xavier’s mannerisms—he’ll like someone with a commanding presence, sure of himself, firm and imposing, but with a sharp mind and tongue. Erik’s superior height is also an asset. 

“Ah, and so I am ordered and must therefore obey,” Xavier says dramatically, though his eyes are glinting. “Anything for you, darling?” 

“Guinness, please,” his male friend says cheekily, and laughs when Xavier slaps the back of his head. 

“If I’d been talking to you, I’d have called you little girl,” Xavier said with a contemptuous look, too soon fractured by a wide, boyish grin. 

“Stop that, Charles, our love can never be, you know that. I’m a prince and you’re a beggar.” 

“You’re more a princess,” Xavier shifts his head to get a stray lock of hair out of the corner of his eye, where it has apparently tangled with his lashes, and really, who puts those kinds of eyes on a man? 

Erik realizes he might be developing a fixation, and is somewhat grateful this night will most definitely end with Xavier dead. 

The man in question glances around casually, taking in the patrons just as Erik did earlier. His eyes linger a bit on Erik, which is nothing short of a good sign. He would have him yet. 

Xavier makes his way to the bar, arms himself with the single-malt and the pint, and returns to the table with his friends, where he stubbornly remains for another hour and a half, allowing his friends to take turns brining the drinks. It’s clear enough he’s not giving Erik any room to maneuver, and Erik must admit he’s bewildered. He would expect a man that is as outgoing as Xavier appears to be to be comfortable with at least making the first move, throwing a smile his way or looking at him repeatedly enough Erik notices the interest. 

He does none of these things. In fact, he ignores Erik with a graceful, elegant nonchalance that makes it look as though he’s forgotten he exists entirely, rather than be too aware of his presence. 

Erik moves to the bar to get a fresh pint, wondering what he might do to attract the man’s attention that won’t be much too obvious. Approaching him while in the company of his group of friends is out of the question—not only because Xavier is using them as shield, but also because he cannot risk them remembering his face. 

He is working out how to get Xavier on his own when, lo and behold, the man finally makes his move, appearing in the bar next to him quite unexpectedly. 

“You can either keep staring at me,” he said, voice soft and quiet, eyes vibrant and unbelievable. “Or you can buy me a drink and tell me what you want.” 

“Quite forward, are we?” Erik arches a brow. 

“Your glare is making my head ache,” Xavier shrugs. 

“I’m not glaring, I’m taking in the view.”

“For one and a half hours? The _view_ is not about to change. We haven’t met.”

“Erik Lehnsherr,” Erik introduces himself, offering his hand. Xavier takes it, shakes it firmly and dryly and immediately releases it, as if the physical contact is not something he can readily bear. 

“Charles Xavier.”

Erik calls the bartender and orders two glasses of fine scotch. As they wait for the drinks he gives Xavier an appraising look. 

“I’m going to go with the cliché and say your eyes are shocking.”

“Thank you, I quite like them myself. My mother gave them to me. You have remarkable eyes yourself—the EYCL1 gene located in chromosome 19 has given you blue-green eyes. They shift with the light. Quite memorable.”

Erik feels a tendril of cold down his pine, and smiles. _Memorable. Recognizable_. Best be quick about it, then.

“I gather you like it?”

“Blue eyes, ginger, tall. What’s not to like?”

Xavier’s blasé attitude is off-putting. Erik hadn’t expected to have to deal with someone as self-assured as himself. Usually men as straightforward as Xavier is showing to be look for kinder, softer types, and there’s a lot Erik can fake—but not that. 

“So then what are we waiting for?” he asks bluntly, swiftly deciding if this is the road Xavier wants to go down, then he’s going to be the one taking the lead. He can play rough. Rough is his game. 

“My single-malt, obviously,” Xavier replies, looking at him out the corner of his eye, dark, heavy lashes obscuring the irises. There’s something sharp about those eyes, something dangerous prowling behind the astonishing color, and Erik finds the threat draws him in. 

He smiles like a wound. 

“Drink up, then, and be fast about it.” 

Xavier’s lips curl in something resembling a smile, but there’s something sinister lurking at the edges of his full lips. Something familiar and comfortable and dangerous, something Erik is well acquainted with—now if only he could pin-point it precisely. 

The bartender sits the glasses in front of them. Erik takes hold of his and downs it in one gulp, relishing the bur of it as it slides down his throat. Xavier gives him an amused look, and really, this is as far from flirting as Erik can think of. But Xavier obligingly downs his own shot, shutting his eyes tightly as he swallows. Then he tosses his head to shake hair out of his eyes, and very carefully but deliberately hooks a finger in one of Erik’s belt loops, tugging. 

“Let’s go, then,” he says like a man on a mission. 

This is really much too easy. Erik obliges, disentangling himself easily and making his way to the door, knowing Xavier is following him like a fox follows a chicken—and isn’t that the wrong analogy. It’s really the other way around.

Isn’t it?

They’re outside in the cold and Erik turns down the street into an alley, a dark narrow place where his superior height and strength will give him the advantage once he’s done getting what he wants. Once well out of sight of hearing he reaches forward and curls his hand on the nape of Xavier’s neck, bringing him roughly into his own body and crushing him deliberately against the wall. 

“How about you get on your knees?” he asks gravelly. 

Xavier _grins_. The sharp, dangerous glint in his eyes solidifies abruptly, and Erik realizes what it is— _understanding_. The harsh light of the faraway streetlamp throws Xavier’s face in strange relief, obscuring half his features into an inky darkness and hitting his left eye at an angle that makes it look almost transparent. 

“I don’t think so, Erik. You don’t really want me to suck you, and I’d much prefer we don’t waste any more of each other’s times, yes?”

Erik stills. 

“Oh, I know you don’t want to have sex with me, yes. I’ve known all along. You see, one of the fascinating things my _mutation_ allows me to do” _is read your mind._

His lips don’t move with the last part. 

Xavier shifts and Erik instinctively withdraws, intending to get out of striking distance; but Xavier holds onto his arms with deceptively strong fingers, so instead Erik twists sharply, pressing his own back to the wall for leverage and protection. 

Only Xavier isn’t attacking him. He allows him to move and fluidly goes along for the ride, dropping Erik’s arms to press his hands to the walls at the sides of his shoulders, whole posture menacing and feline. 

_You ought to be more careful what hornet’s nest you kick, my friend, you are not by any means the meanest shark in the ocean._

“You’re in my head,” Erik murmurs, shocked. “How?”

_You’ve got your tricks, I’ve got mine._

“You knew what I wanted since the beginning—why come along?” Erik is quickly growing furious. He’s been toyed with, led like a lamb to slaughter, like a helpless child by the guiding hand of someone who knows more than he does. Xavier’s soft, quiet tone in his mind irks him and irritates him—it feels invasive and wrong, though it’s not actively aggressive. 

_I could be_ , though, Xavier’s mind whispers. _Your mind is easy to unravel. I need only pull on the right memory and you’ll crumble._

“Then why not do it?” Erik hisses venomously. 

_Because unlike some of us, I value life._

Erik huffs out a bitter laugh. 

_I have seen so much in the last few years_ , Xavier’s tone is sad and thoughtful now. _I used to be so full of hope and mercy. But no longer, I’m afraid. I will let you off with a warning now, Erik. You will walk away from this bar tonight and you will not return seeking to take my life. If you do, I will be forced to help you understand that while one may condition a creature to tolerate physical pain, mental pain is unbearable._

There is a shine like a blade in the blue of Xavier’s eyes, and Erik knows this man doesn’t lie or make empty threats. 

“Just give me Shaw’s location and I’ll leave,” he insists urgently, unsure and upset on his footing. 

Xavier straightens, slips his hands in his pockets and gives him a level look. 

_I won’t be a participant in your suicide. The horrors in which Shaw is entangled aren’t as easily solved as to simply cease his existence. Listen to me carefully now, Erik Lehnsherr._

Xavier tilts his head to look at Erik from the corner of his eye. 

_You will never get Shaw. You run along behind him like a newborn babe, guns blazing and knives unsheathed, killing anything and everything that crosses your path. You should know better than that, Erik. Shaw is no moron, nor is he without friends. You won’t catch a rat by setting fire to a house—you will catch it by laying a trap._

Erik is stunned speechless. 

_We want the same thing, you and I_ , Xavier continues coolly. _We might even want it equally as bad. I am going after Sebastian Shaw, Erik. And if you have a lick of sense in your broken mind, you will stay well out of my path._

Xavier gives him a last, heartbreakingly boyish, ice-cold smile that is wrong all over the place and in every single possible sense, turns on his heel and leaves without another single word or backwards glance.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s summertime now, and the air is hot when he breathes it in, the sun caressing his skin where his polo shirt ends. He’s seen at least two people glance at the mark on his left arm—21487—and he wishes he could wear long sleeves, but not’s summer, and it would hardly be conspicuous if he went around in a turtleneck. 

It’s not that he has anything to hide—it’s simply that he prefers to be forgettable. And while most people won’t easily remember the exact number, they’ll remember the contrast of poorly drawn numbers stark against tanned skin. 

He find the coffee store easily, slides inside and into a booth at the back before removing his dark sunglasses. He smiles at the waitress, charming and smooth. 

“Just coffee, please. Black as night.” 

The girl nods, smiles flirtatiously and is on her way. He relaxes back and crosses his legs, staring out towards the window absently. 

The man he’s meeting today, a low-level Scotland Yard agent, knows the location of Azazel’s safe-house. That everyone in the Hellfire Club has their own safe-house should probably say quite a lot, but Erik is hardly surprised. He wouldn’t trust Shaw as far as he could throw him, even if circumstances were different and they were allies. 

He recognizes the agent as soon as he comes on—he’s dressed as a civilian, naturally, but he’s got that militarized, official air that speaks of the habit of carrying a gun and knowing how to use it. People can so rarely disguise themselves well. 

The man slides into his booth, across the table, and removes his own aviator glasses. 

“Nice day out,” he comments idly, knowing they need to stall before one of them can leave without arising suspicion. “It’s been raining lately, so a little sun is appreciated.”

“It hasn’t rained while I’ve been here.” 

“You arrived what, a day ago at most? We had a bit of a storm last week.”

“Bad?”

“Bad enough,” the agent shrugs. “Has it been long since you last came to Oxford?”

Erik smiles like a blade, “Two years.”

“Not much has changed, I believe. Oxford moves rather slowly in time.” 

“Maybe. There was a pub I knew that’s not longer there. Student lair, you know the sort.” 

The man laughs, “Yes, I do. But for every one of those that closes down three more pop out, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Hm.”

The man gives him a glance. His brown eyes are dark and wide, with intriguingly alluring flecks of gold. Erik realizes with a detached interest that the man is in fact rather attractive. Perhaps some time ago he would have been moved to push things a little, stir the man’s interest. 

Unfortunately, Erik is not thinking of staying more time than absolutely necessary in Oxford, nor is he attracted to people with brown eyes. 

“That common friend we have is living in Mexico,” he says, and for a disoriented moment Erik wonders how he knew he was thinking of—and then he snaps out of it. _Azazel_. “Small little town called Chihuahua.” 

“They’re always in Mexico,” Erik mused. 

“Well, the Ice Queen’s safe-house is in France. She’s pretentious like that.” 

“That she is.” 

The man smiles, eyes flickering with amusement. 

“I’ve heard you’ve somewhat changed your methods,” he says quietly. “Why, I haven’t heard of you murdering someone in months.” 

“They’re dead.” 

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, old boy. Only I haven’t _heard_ of it, and that’s brilliant, that is.” 

“Live and learn,” Erik says thoughtfully. 

“Indeed,” the Englishman smiles, finishes his coffee in a gulp and winces. “Awful. Did I pick this store, or was it you? If I did, I apologize for the dreadful coffee.” 

Erik smiled, easy and relaxed even if his senses are alert. “I forgive you. In a hurry?”

“Oh, you know. Bad people to catch, murderers to process, files piles to demolish. All in the name of King and Country. Ta,” he grins, somewhat gay in his amusement, and rises smoothly to his feet. He flicks his fingers at Erik in goodbye, picks up his coat and leaves. 

Erik lingers for a moment, slightly mystified at the whole encounter. The man was nothing like what he expected, although he’s been in contact with him before, via phone. He didn’t seem quite so queer the other times. Erik wonders if perhaps he’s simply grown comfortable around Erik and now fails to watch himself as he should. 

Filing the matter for later analysis, he drops money onto the tabletop and goes back out into the Oxford summer sun, squinting up at the sky through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Not a single cloud around. 

He’s aware that he’s being watched, and it’s not the eyes of his Scotland Yard friend that are fixed on him. Perhaps the funny little man was followed. He’s always been quite careful, but he is, after all, only human. Erik knows he hasn’t been betrayed—he knows where the Englishman lives, and has made it abundantly clear he’s not above killing him, should he think of double crossing him. 

What he needs to do now is shake off this tail, retrace his steps and murder the employer, and then return to his hotel and swiftly leave Oxford. 

He’s all too aware that he’s crossing a line in a somewhat shaky truce. It’s been two years since he last was in Oxford and this time he comes with no ill intent. He’s only been in the city for half a day. That didn’t stop a certain telepath from sending him a postcard to his hotel room (and God knows how he found that out) that said, in an elegant, long handwriting: _‘You’ve used your warning, Erik. There isn’t much I’m above doing, these days.’_

Erik believes him. 

He brings down the front brim of his fedora and casually slips his hands in his pockets, walking down the street towards a nearby park. For a while he strolls, contemplative and calm, thinking of ways he can make his tail’s body disappear without kicking up any dust. 

Now he really wishes he’d worn a long-sleeved shirt. 

He spots the greenery of the park and smiles. It’ll be easy enough to confront his tail in that park, in the shadow of some tree tucked out of the way. Erik’s learned the art of subtle movement, the way to slither around and twist like a snake, striking out just as fast. 

He’s thinking of the knives concealed on the small of his back when—

_Bad idea, old friend. Keep walking, don’t stop, don’t look alarmed, most especially don’t glance around. I can see you, you don’t need to see me._

Erik nearly groans. _I’m not doing anything, Xavier._

_If you kill the man that follows you, you might as well flag yourself as a mutant._

_You should stay out of my head_ , he thinks harshly, feeling violated.

 _I made no such promise, nor will you ever hear me make it. I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep._ The nonchalance with which the man speaks tells Erik that Xavier is not one willing to compromise. 

_I need to get rid of this tail. What brilliant suggestion do you have to offer?_

_Turn right in the next street. I will stall your tail for a moment, long enough for you to meet my companion. She will tell you what to do._

_Why should I trust you?_

_I don’t know that you have that many alternatives. Besides, Erik, you’re the one that came onto me with murderous intent, so if anyone here is at all reliable, it is certainly not you. Don’t fool yourself. You need me._

_Cocky, aren’t you?_ Erik turns right on the street.

_Are you still hung up on that? You’ll need more than pretty blue eyes to get me on my knees for you._

Erik wants to retort something, but with a curious sort of slithering movement, Xavier detaches himself from his mind. He didn’t feel him come in, but in the wake of his departure Erik feels somewhat emptied, like his thoughts have compliantly moved out of the way to accommodate the girth of Xavier’s, and now that he has left they have too much space inside his head. 

Erik pulls himself back to reality and finds a girl, long blond hair tumbling in waves across her shoulders and back, leaning casually against a wall. As she spots him she straightens, brown eyes flecked with gold—and isn’t that peculiar—and strides purposefully to him. She holds out a handful of things to him that, in his shock, he reaches forward to take without complaint. 

“Here, keys, map, address. The car is a blue Camaro, it’s parked on the curve over there. You wreck the car, I wreck your life.”

“How are you supposed to distract this man? He won’t be seduced by some girl, you know.”

The girl rolls her eyes, “Thanks for not being a sexist pig who thinks women are only good for their figure. I’m not seducing anyone, unless you want me to ruin your suave reputation.” 

With another roll of her eyes and a slight shake of her shoulders to relax her muscles, she’s suddenly—

Well. 

Erik knows himself well, so obviously this is a familiar sight, only staring at his own eyes right in front of him, where there are no mirrors around, is rather disconcerting. 

“Drive safe,” the creature in front of him tells him with his own voice, and then turns around and strolls down the street, perfect even in the copy of Erik’s movements. 

Disturbing is too little a word for what this is. 

Erik snaps himself out of his shock, tightening his fingers around the keys and paper in his hand. The Camaro is a beauty, roaring obediently under his hand as he turns the key and takes the street down, following the map. 

The map leads him to a small apartment building several blocks away from downtown Oxford. The place looks run down and on the verge of being abandoned, and he’s quite certain someone that dresses as sharply as Xavier was the last time he saw him can’t possibly live here.

As soon as he gets near the door, it flies open and he’s confronted with a tall, lanky ginger kid with watery blue eyes. 

“Prof sent word,” the boy says, stepping aside to let him into the hall. “Said you might be coming around. I’m Sean. Alex and Hank went over to your hotel room to get your stuff. We’re leaving as soon as it’s dark.” 

“Leaving,” Erik repeats coldly. “And where are we going, precisely?”

“Safe-house in Westchester County, New York,” Sean gives Erik a weary look. “The most defended, fortified manor you’ll ever find, short of Buckingham Palace. Home of the X-Men, Charles’ mutant refugees.” 

Erik arches a brow, “I thought his division wasn’t successful.” 

“The division wasn’t,” Sean replied. “Because every time they did find a mutant Charles made them forget and look like no breakthroughs were ever done. He won’t let anyone come near any of us unless he’s sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don’t mean harm.” 

“Protective, is he?”

“He’s been through some things,” Sean says darkly, blue eyes skittering away as if he feels he should say the words, but lives in hope that no one will touch the subject beyond the shallow surface of what he has just said. 

“Anyway,” he says, clearly relieved when Erik doesn’t pick up on his slack. “You can use Charles’ room if you want to like, nap or something. He won’t be coming along for now.”

“Where is he?”

Sean waves a hand, “Who knows. He’ll disappear for days on end sometimes, then show up again and act like he just left ten minutes ago.”

“He doesn’t sound very reliable.” 

“He’s the more reliable person we’ve ever met,” Sean counters firmly. “He might not always be around, but he’s right at your elbow as soon as you need him, and he’ll never let any of us get hurt—not even _you_.”

Erik rubs a hand down his face. All these mixed signals he’s getting from Xavier are messing with his head. 

“Fine, whatever you say. Which way’s his room?” 

He doesn’t intend to take a nap—not by any means. He’s not tired and he rarely indulges in unnecessary rest. But he admits the idea of having a look at Xavier’s personal room is quite intriguing. The man is a strange contradiction, a vast power leashed seemingly to no morals wrapped up in the face of an innocent boyish man. Erik’s been curious and fixated on him since the moment they met, though he’s been smart enough not to cross paths with him again. 

He knew, instinctively, they couldn’t afford to ignore each other forever; but he also knew when you were dealing with someone like Xavier, it was best to let them make the first move. 

Sean shows him to the room in question and then quickly retreats to his own, room, ostensibly ill at ease with his company. Erik is unsure as to what he’s done to make the boy uncomfortable, but he suspects it is related to his attempted murder of Xavier two years ago. It is evident the telepath has made it clear he feared nothing from Erik, or otherwise would not have let him near the building, but Sean remains seemingly unconvinced. 

Xavier’s room is in the attic, separated by everyone else’s living quarters by three empty, neglected floors. Why the telepath required such distance is beyond Erik, but he can’t complain—the silence in the attic is welcoming and calm. 

The room’s floor of unpolished wood is uneven and deformed by the swelling and deflating of years of humidity, though it is clear the problem was now solved by the lack of smell. It doesn’t favor barefoot strolling unless you want a sole full of splinters. It is Spartan and sparsely furnished: a bed, a desk with a chair, a closed wardrobe next to a chest of drawers. On top of the chest a single mirror overlooks the room, reflecting the light coming in from the unsheltered attic window. 

The room says very little of its owner, and Erik knows immediately this is a room Xavier occasionally uses, but he doesn’t live here permanently. It has literally no personality. Erik goes to the window to look down at the street.

There on the windowsill he finds a book: Ernest Hemingway’s _For Whom the Bell Tolls_. The book is old and dog-eared, obviously having been read several times over. 

“For it tolls for thee,” Erik says quietly, resting the book back in its place in the windowsill. 

_Don’t scare the children_ , Xavier’s voice filters quietly into his own. 

“Sean seems scared already. What did you tell them?” Erik asks aloud, because concentrating on forming the words only in his mind will take some training. 

_The only thing I can ever tell them: the truth._

“You intend me to believe you never lie?” Erik scoffed. 

_Believe what you will. I expect nothing from you but for you to behave around the children, and to wait for my arrival before you quit the manor in Westchester. I would like a word with you._

“You’re having a word now.”

_Face to face, Erik. This is rather unfair for you._

“I didn’t know you concerned yourself with such a notion as fairness, seeing as you’re not bothered to not break-and-enter into my head.” 

_There’s much you don’t know about me. Had the circumstances allowed it I would have kept away from you and leave you to yourself, but unfortunately something has come up._

“Oh, you need me now, hm? You’re a bit of an arrogant asshole.”

_Not a bit, I’m afraid. Quite a lot. Most of me, in fact. But then that’s the pot calling the kettle black, is it not? And I never said I needed you—I said something has come up, and I could no longer leave you to deal with it alone. I might not like you much, but that doesn’t mean I’d wish you harm._

“Harm,” Erik muses, frowning. “Who’s after me? I’ll double back on them before they know what hit them.”

 _You’re talented at nothing if not wrecking havoc,_ Xavier said with some amusement, though his tone sounded mostly bitter and jaded. _However, I can’t in good conscience let you do this on your own. You call yourself Frankenstein’s monster, Erik. Well your maker happens to be looking for you, and not precisely to kiss and make up._

“Shaw’s wanted me dead for years,” Erik says dismissively. 

_Shaw wanted you broken and kneeling at his feet, not dead. Are you really this foolish? Things have changed, Erik. You’ve grown into a different creature entirely, one Shaw knows he cannot hope to control—and he won’t have a free agent as powerful as you have become declare open war on him._

“How do you know so much about him anyway?” Erik asks aggressively, wishing the telepath was in the room with him, so he could glare at him, maybe even exert some physical violence. This disembodied presence puts him on edge. 

Xavier is retreating, but he holds still in a pause, as if devoting the question a moment of contemplation, considering whether Erik deserves the answer or not. Then: _He never succeeded with you—he thought he could shape you like a blade under a hammer of hate and pain, but all he did was make it harder for you to bruise. And then you escaped, and he needed a new pet project, but he’d learned from you, knew what didn’t work. He never once hit me, you know. Whenever I defied him, he’d hit my sister instead._

Xavier is gone, and Erik leans shaky hands on the windowsill and struggles not to retch.


	3. Chapter 3

Xavier Hall, home to generations of the highly regarded Xavier family, all of them respectable men and women of brilliant careers, respectable manners and admirable will. 

Erik’s been assigned a room in the bottom floor, near the gardens, and he knows he’s been given that one because it has great windows that help fend off his tendency to feel boxed in, trapped. 

The room next door is territory of a small, slender little girl of too-white hair and too-dark skin, and her claustrophobia is a thing to be feared. Once in the night he woke to her screams and the rumble of thunder touching land so near the glass in the windows cracked. 

Her name is Ororo Monroe, and she steers clear of him with an awareness that is almost eerie. 

Erik is told to stay out of Charles Xavier’s room, so naturally as soon as he’s left alone that’s precisely where he goes. 

Unlike the other one, this one is actually lived ion, and Erik can easily tell. It’s a masculine place, dark wooden floor polished and pristine, walls painted a dark blue, curtains heavy and thick over tall closed windows that open up into a long balcony. The furniture is strong and elegant, well crafted and old. It’s clear this has always been the master bedroom, territory of the Xavier patriarch. A home inside a castle. 

A book case full to the brim with books of any sort and size takes up sprawling residence in the entire back wall. 

The silence here is similar in taste to the one in the old building in Oxford; calm, quiet, like a warm blanket. 

He begins to suspect Xavier needs that silence to live inside his own head. 

_He’d hit my sister instead._

“So your fearless leader,” he asks the blond Alex Summers the next afternoon as he finds him lounging lazily in the sunlight. “Does he ever bother to come around?”

“He’s never away more than a week. Why, you’ve got some place more interesting to be?” 

Erik has to admit that Xavier Hall is uniquely fascinating, full of mutants openly displaying their powers without fear of being rejected or hurt. 

“Besides,” Alex adds quietly, giving Erik a look. “Prof said Shaw’s out for your blood. You’re safe here. Can’t you just, I don’t know, relax, for like ten minutes?” 

“I don’t trust your telepath.”

“That’s your worst mistake,” Alex says dryly. “Charles has enough issues to fill up a container, but he’s as loyal as they come and he’ll burn everything to the ashes before he lets someone he’d protecting get hurt.”

Something dark and scared flashes through Alex’ blue eyes, and Erik stills, suddenly paying very close attention. 

“Believe me,” Alex murmurs. “You don’t want to be Charles’ enemy.” 

“You say issues,” Erik asks carefully, assessing Alex’s reaction. “As in…?”

“He can’t be touched, for one,” Alex says uneasily, as if he’s unsure of whether he should be divulging this information. “Like, no skin to skin contact ever. Strictly off limits. You’ll see him always wearing gloves. Take my word on it when I say it’s on your best interest never to brush up against his unprotected skin.” 

“Or?” despite himself, Erik feels weary and slightly alarmed. 

“You’ll wish you hadn’t done it,” Alex says firmly, and the conversation is considered at an end. 

So Erik stays in Xavier Hall, within its constricting, looming walls. At once caged and adrift, he wanders without any real destination, sometimes finding the will to train alongside the other mutants, but mostly keeping to himself. He’s unused to the constant presence of others in his life, especially that of the youngest children, their happiness and comfort effervescent and bright. He find some solace in the silent rooms that Xavier isn’t occupying, often drifting unwillingly to the man’s study where he can sit alone and read, helping himself without any remorse to Xavier’s well-stocked but hardly-touched bar. 

On the night of his fourth day in the manor he jerks roughly awake, choking on a name spilling from dry lips, and scrambles to sit up as a moonlight streams through the open windows. 

“You were screaming,” Ororo Monroe’s dark eyes are wide and scared, her face pale in the silver light. Her hand is still wrapped gently around his wrist, her childish fingers unable to encompass is girth. 

“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely, rubbing a hand down his face and gently twisting his wrist out of her grasp. “It won’t happen again. Go back to bed.” 

“I have nightmares too,” Ororo says, hugging herself shakily. “Sometimes I remember I’m here and I can turn away from the monsters. You can do that, too. Professor Xavier taught me how. All you have to do is remember you’re here, and decide you won’t be scared anymore.” 

“It’s not that easy,” Erik says helplessly, remembering the ghost feeling of a scalpel’s blade against his ribs. 

“I can do it,” the child says. “You’re a man and you’re strong and you’re tall and no one can hurt you. If I can do it, you can do it.” 

“I’ve been hurt before,” Erik replies, somewhat mystified by the girl’s wisdom. 

“But now you’re here,” she smiles tremulously, so much faith, and tentatively lays her hand on his arm again, seeking to comfort him in her childish, innocent way. “Now Professor Xavier’s watching over you. He never lets anyone get hurt.”

Erik sighs, runs a hand through his disheveled hair and manages to pull up a smile for her. 

“I’m sure he does as best he can. Thank you, Ororo. Go back to bed.” 

The girl is unconvinced; he can tell from the set of her stiff shoulders and the way she glances back at him, but he can do nothing to reassure her. 

As the night gives way quietly to the day and dawn breaks orange and pink across his windows, Erik sits in bed, awake. 

In the evening of the next day as he sits in the kitchen with the only human in Xavier Hall—a slender CIA agent in on Charles’ secrets called Moira McTaggart—and Hank McCoy, the telepath finally arrives home, not without a flurry of activity. 

Bobby, the boy they call Iceman, stumbles hurriedly into the kitchen, pale and weary: “Hank, come on. Charles’ is hurt again.” 

Hank and McTaggart jump nimbly to their feet, seemingly accustomed to this situation. Erik follows after them at a more sedate pace, unwilling to be swept up in their frantic concern even as children rush by him in an endless stream, worry spreading like wildfire through the manor. 

As Erik makes his way into the hall Xavier is already shrugging off Hank’s hands, striding purposefully to the stairs as he apparently always does. The man seems to move as if he knows precisely what he is doing at any given time. 

Erik likes that about him. 

The right side of his face is streaked with blood, two long, deep gashes apparent on the side of his brow near his temple. Erik hasn’t seen him in two years: he finds the telepath’s shorter hair suits him, allowing more contrast to his unbelievable, vibrant eyes. 

He’s every bit as alive and taut with energy and intent as the last time he laid eyes on him, though he seems leaner, sharper, honed like a blade. 

“I’m alright, everyone,” he says, raising his voice and hands to get general attention. “Just a cut, nothing to worry about. Go back to your classes, yes? I’ll see you all later. Moira, that’s enough with the fussing, love. Erik, you decided to stay, how lovely. I’ll be with you momentarily.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Erik says in a tone that brooks no arguments, taking long strides to catch up with him on the stairs. 

Up close Xavier looks worse for wear. The cuts are deeper than they looked at a distance, and his skin is pale down to his full lips. 

“I was hoping whatever you’d like to speak with me would wait,” Xavier says tiredly, tilting his head to invite Erik to move alongside him. 

“I think perhaps I’m aiming to make sure you won’t fall down the stairs.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” Xavier dismisses, though it’s clear to Erik he’s moving his head a little bit more carefully than would be normal. 

“What was that, anyway?”

“A couple of flying knives, I believe?” Xavier frowns. “No matter. So how are you finding your accommodations?”

“Ororo is a fascinating neighbor.” 

Xavier grins, boyish and sinister with his face streaked in fresh blood. Erik only now spots a cut on his upper lip, barely scabbed over. 

“Such a dear child. She can make herself levitate, did you know?”

“Where have you been, Xavier?”

The telepath pushes open the door to his study and strolls inside, making a beeline for his desk. He opens a drawer, fishes out a folder and flips through the pages there contained, looking for something. Erik sees his hands, indeed covered in black, fine-leather backless gloves. 

“Xavier,” he repeats, a little more sternly. “Where have you _been_?”

 _I found Angel_ , the telepath replies. “We got in a bit of a bar fight—quite literally I’m afraid.” _She’s a stripper._

Erik groans, “Stick to one method of communication. You’re making me dizzy.” 

Xavier glances up, blue eyes wide. 

“Am I thinking at you instead of speaking?”

“You go back and forth,” Erik answers wearily. 

“Oh.” _I’m sorry_. “That happens when I’m a little off balance” _my head aches, I’m sorry, sorry._ “Just leave me alone” _It’ll pass._

“You should get that looked at,” Erik says, rubbing his brow. 

_You’re looking at it_ , Xavier thinks distractedly, rifling through the file. A drop of crimson blood falls on the polished oak of the desk. 

Erik huffs in exasperation and steps around the desk to join him. 

“What are you looking for? Let me do it, you’re dripping blood all over the damn place.” 

Xavier obediently moves away, moving to retrieve a med-kit from a drawer in the desk, and it’s perhaps telling that he has one so near at hand. 

_Telephone number for_ “Jehova.”

Erik glances up, “The god?” Xavier certainly looks insane. 

Xavier huffs out a breathless laugh.

“The mutant. His parents were” _particular_ “about names. Angel’s on the run, and I know she’ll go to him” _they were in a relationship._

“Stop that,” Erik hisses harshly. 

Xavier retreats a step, smiling wanly. He closes his eyes and seems to give some real effort to concentrating on using his lips. The words he forms are slow and careful. There appears to be a significant delay between his thoughts and his articulation of them.

“I can’t help it, Erik. My shields are fractured. I require solitude and rest to reconstruct them.” 

“How did they break?” Erik mutters, not even sure the question makes sense because he’s not sure the damn _conversation_ makes sense. 

“Emma Frost and I collided rather loudly. She tore me apart. Although I do believe I paid her in kind. She won’t make the mistake of underestimating me again.” 

“Here,” Erik says, giving him a piece of paper with a single phone number handwritten beneath the scrawl _Jehova/sparks_. “Sparks?”

“Out of the tips of his fingers,” Xavier replies absently, swiping a cotton ball along the cuts on his face rather carelessly as he looks over the number. 

Erik reaches forward impatiently, intending to clean the wounds because obviously Xavier has no idea how or is just not interested in doing so. His fingers hardly brush the man’s jaw before the telepath is flinching brusquely back, and a blade of blinding pain bites behind Erik’s eyeballs, making him stagger back and choke on a gasp. 

“Don’t” _no touching, not ever, never_ “I’m sorry, God, are you alright? Erik, how bad did I hurt you?” _never touch me without my consent, I will tear you apart in the blink of an eye._

“Sorry,” Erik croaks. “Alex warned me, I forgot. I—but we touched in the bar, that time.” 

“I’ve deteriorated since,” the Englishman says remorsefully. “It’s gotten quite intolerable. You should leave, Erik, for your own sake. You’ll have a headache soon.”

“How can you not control this?” Erik asks, genuinely bewildered. “You weren’t this… unhinged when we met.” 

“Oh, I’m not—this isn’t usually the case. The wound is making me light-headed. But well, yes—as I said, it’s grown worse. Again, I apologize. I didn’t mean to attack you. I also apologize for the coming headache, although that undoubtedly won’t stop you cursing at me once it hits. Um, I’d suggest ibuprofen in generous amounts.”

Erik groans, backing up a step. 

“You’re a public menace.”

“Yes, quite.”

“Can you take care of that on your own?” he gestures vaguely at Xavier’s wound. 

The man smiles sadly, “I’ve not much of a choice, my friend.”

Erik sighs, “We need to talk.”

“I know. We will, I promise you. Just not right now, yes? I’ll find you. Go on along now.”

The German leaves him to himself, closing the door quietly behind. Down along the hallway huddled against an alcove he finds a certain little girl, dark eyes wide, white hair pulled back tightly. 

“Is he alright?” she asks quietly, as if the mere sound of her voice might risk disturbing her beloved professor, even at this distance. 

Erik blinks, unfamiliar with the position of offering comfort to a scared child. He tries to decide what to tell her. It’s clear enough Xavier is as far from ‘alright’ as a man can get without going spitting-mad, but he can’t very well be telling that to a little girl. Neither, however, can he lie. 

“He will be,” he settles for, and hopes he’s telling the truth, because honestly? He hasn’t the faintest idea. 

“Did you ever get around finishing that German homework?” he find himself asking randomly. 

Ororo blinks. 

“Will you help me?” she asks, a smile spreading hopefully over her lips. 

He does. By the time they’re finished, Erik is cursing Charles Xavier with the heat of a thousand burning suns. He feels like a hot iron is being poked behind his eyes every five seconds, a pain throbbing in tune with the rhythm of his heart, swelling and deflating, swelling and deflating, over and over and over in a maddening loop. 

He’ll know better than to ever touch the man again, now.


	4. Chapter 4

Erik has to admit that it is rather surreal when, the next morning, he strolls into the kitchen of Xavier Hall prepared to be alone in his early breakfast as he has been so far, only to find Xavier sitting down to the table, sipping orange juice and reading the newspaper. 

He’s wearing a long-sleeved grey shirt and the same black gloves. 

“Do you wear those at all times?” he asks as he starts the coffee machine. 

“I take them off to sleep and shower,” Xavier replies easily. He’s cleaned the cuts on his brow and put butterfly-stitches on them to facilitate their healing. It doesn’t look like he might be getting scars. “I trust your head is alright?”

Erik cuts his eyes to him, glaring. 

Xavier musters a thin smile. 

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to learn to give me a wide berth,” he folds his newspaper, intent on abandoning the current subject. Erik is unconvinced and wishes to pry further, but he recognizes he’s on Xavier’s territory now, and will for the time being play by his rules. The telepath smiles crookedly, obviously catching the tail end of that thought. 

“So, have you grown used to the manor life yet?”

“A school for mutants,” Erik muses, eyeing the telepath. “What I don’t understand is what precisely you hope to accomplish.”

“I only want a safe environment in which these children can learn to understand and accept their gifts.”

“You give them battle training,” Erik replies, arching a cynical brow. 

“Yes,” Xavier says firmly. “Because I’m idealistic, not idiotic. Most of these children have already faced horrid situation on account of their gifts—I will not have them be unable to protect themselves simply to guard my sensibilities.” 

“Face it, Xavier, you’re training an _army_.” 

“I’ve asked no one to join nothing,” Xavier counters. “This X-Men business you’ve likely heard is nothing but a game amongst them. This is a place of safety and learning.”

“Yet the kids here seemed rattled but unsurprised to see you return injured.” 

Xavier holds his gaze steadily. 

“I do what I have to do,” he says, tone quiet and even in the kitchen air. “And I do what I must.” 

“A real man will do as he shall,” Erik replies.

Xavier smiles absently, “Your personality dictates your actions, just as your actions dictate your personality. I do what I do because it is who I am. If I did otherwise, I would not be myself. And I am who I am because my life has shaped me so.”

Erik dismisses the possibly endless philosophical discussion with a shake of his head, waving a hand in irritation. 

“This still doesn’t explain you getting in a bar fight with a stripper.” 

Now Xavier laughs. Then he dismisses the subject with an elegant gesture of his hand, a grace learned from years of schooling in the proper habits and behavior of a man of his position, born and bred to take leadership of a household such as this. The Xaviers are old blood, as much as they are old fortune. 

Erik allows a silence to settle between them as the Englishman sips his orange juice. He pours coffee into a mug, taking in its earthy scent. He’s slightly glad that the school doesn’t spare this luxury; though the children under the age of sixteen are forbidden anywhere near the coffee pot, those who’ve been around the world for a little longer can enjoy the pleasure of good, rich coffee. 

“How did you come to be in Shaw’s clutches?” he asks, very quietly, sitting to the table next to the man. “I see this house and I don’t understand. Me he picked off Auschwitz-Birkenau. But he can’t possibly have just slipped in and kidnapped you out of this monstrosity of a manor. A high-born child of a wealthy family gone missing would have kicked up a lot of dust.”

“I wasn’t kidnapped,” Xavier agrees calmly. The blue of his eyes is flat and dead. “I was sold. By my stepfather. Me and my sister Raven both—bonus package, half the price. Although I imagine he did get quite a fortune out of it—he bought a magnificent car with it. Raven set it on fire. With him still inside.”

Erik’s throat has gone dry. 

“Hell hath no fury,” Xavier says lightly, and sips at his orange juice, and Erik thinks he’s sitting in a kitchen in a castle having breakfast with a madman. But then a fuse catches fire. 

“We can do this, together,” he murmurs intensely, straightening and grasping Xavier’s arm, the cloth of his shirt a protection between them. “We can find Shaw, kill him—with your telepathy and my abilities, _we can do this_. You said it yourself, we want the same thing, maybe even nearly as bad—“

“Erik,” Xavier interrupts with exasperation. “If we go after him now, you’ll get killed and I’ll get raped _then_ killed. We’re not nearly strong enough to face all of his minions. Besides—we can’t just go over there and start attacking them. We need to give them a chance, one warning.” 

“You’ve not lost all mercy, then,” Erik comments, tentatively taking a sip at the scalding-hot coffee. 

Xavier smiles weakly. 

“Raven’s likened it to embers after the fire has burnt out. I am but remains.” 

“Who said that?” Erik arches a brow. 

“Just now? I did. I didn’t hit you _that_ hard last night, did I?” 

“You can shock someone into schizophrenia?” Erik asks incredulously. 

“I can shock anyone into anything,” the telepath mumbles. He pauses, glances down. “That’s dangerous, my friend. Don’t get used to that.”

Erik realizes, startled, that his hand is still on Xavier’s arm. He releases him, shaking his head somewhat apologetically. 

“So what now?” he asks. 

“Now? Now I have classes, or rather I do in a couple of hours—I don’t sleep much.”

“That’s deteriorating, too?” Erik’s tone is dry. 

Xavier smiles, “No. I just suffer from insomnia, have since I was a child. You don’t get much sleep, yourself, hm?”

Erik is going to answer that, but his mind gets derailed by another thought, and instead he says, “Ororo has pretty bad nightmares.”

The telepath sobers immediately. “Goddamnit. She has nightmares whenever I’m away for more than two days. As do some of the other children—I fear they’ve grown to accustomed to the feel of my mind over theirs, but there’s very little I can do to fix that.”

Erik is disbelieving. 

“I don’t understand how you don’t have complete control over your mind at this point. How old _are_ you?” 

Xavier gives him an irritable glance. “Your gift comes alive at your order. Mine just never stops. Attempting to control it at all times is like remembering, every hour of every day, to breathe only shallowly although you can breathe very deeply. And I’ve not the faintest idea what it has to do with anything, but I’m twenty-five.” 

Erik stares at him. 

_Running a goddamn school, can’t possibly be that young—four years younger—how long since he left Shaw, how long were they when he bought them?_

“I don’t run the school on paper, the principal does. I only own the property and occasionally take on some of the classes. I’m not here nearly enough to be the driving force behind this place. I spend half my time in Oxford, giving lectures.” 

“You’re a lecturer at twenty-five?”

“I graduated at twenty-three,” Xavier nods absently. 

“When did you—I mean—“

“I was thirteen, Raven was nine,” Xavier replies monotonously. “I’d just turned twenty when Raven got me out.” 

Seven years, Erik thinks with horror. Erik himself had only been in Shaw’s hands for four years. And the Xaviers had apparently picked up right where Erik had left off; twelve years ago now Erik had escaped the compound—twelve years ago now Shaw had bought the siblings. 

“Don’t,” Xavier says softly. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m glad you got away. Your departure had nothing to do with him getting us—he would have gotten us regardless, and perhaps then you would have stayed out of a sense of responsibility towards us. I wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“I could have helped you,” Erik clenches his fists. “You were merely a _child_. I could have—shielded you, or—if only I’d stayed a few days longer, a few more months, then maybe I could have—“

“Shaw would have done what he did at any rate,” Xavier refutes calmly. “Perhaps he would have made you watch. You got away. I’m happy you did.” 

Erik cuts his eyes to him, but the telepath is staring out the window, face soft and calm, and Erik can tell he’s telling the truth—perhaps he really never lies. He studies his profile, his soft curving jaw-line, his full lips, his long nose and too-big eyes. 

_How can you not hate me?_ He wonders, genuinely confused, because he knows how things would be, had the situation be different, had their roles been reversed. 

The Englishman’s face snaps towards his, gaping. 

“ _Hate_ you?” he sputters. “Why would I hate _you?_ So if a gazelle escapes a lion, the gazelle the lion catches next should hate the survivor? _Hardly_. Are you mad?”

Erik runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “I don’t know what to do with you, Xavier. You’re a walking contradiction, you know that?”

“Well, at least we challenge each other,” Xavier says wryly, and then gets to his feet, drowning his glass with one last gulp and leaving it on the sink. “Care to join me for an early training session? I was thinking there might be some interesting things for you to do to out old tool-house—although if you kept from wrecking it, that would be appreciated.” 

Erik’s been occasionally training with the mutant children, so he’s no stranger to the Xavier methods. Unfortunately, he comes very quickly to the realization that Charles Xavier does not, in fact, keep to those methods at all. Where the other instructors have been calm and encouraging in easy-going ways, Xavier sets a punishing rhythm, pushing himself well beyond what can be wise given his recent head injury. Erik can only keep up, startled and stunned at the ferocity with which Xavier attacks the obstacle circuit. 

By the end of the morning they are both winded and sore, and Erik sees Xavier has collected a series of rapidly darkening bruises along his fine-skinned arms. He spots a cut on the knuckle of the right index finger and is surprised when Xavier absent-mindedly bring it up and licks at the blood without flinching. 

The cut in his lip has reopened. 

Darkly, Erik recognizes the harsh, unforgiving philosophy he was subjected to in Shaw’s compound. He’s long since given that up himself, but it seems Xavier is having quite a bit more trouble shrugging off instilled habits. He also understands Xavier knows precisely what he is doing, and despite the fact he looks like he can go on for a bit longer, he stops when Erik stumbles the first time. 

Erik hasn’t been this tired in _years_. 

There’s a bubble of excitement blossoming inside his chest, something like breathless fascination as he watches Xavier swipe distractedly at his bleeding lip, careless for himself even as he fusses unnecessarily over a scrape on Erik’s cheek. 

As he takes a shower minutes later, Erik comprehends that what he felt was astonishment at the realization that, after years of being on his own, he’s found an equal—a _brother_. 

The rest of the day passes by idly, as Xavier spends his time diving in and out of random classes and having private sessions with students with particular concerns. Erik catches glimpses of him in the hallways, grinning boyish and light in the company of boys and girls not that much younger than he is, but who act as though he is the sun in their sky. 

Late that night as he comes back from a moonlit stroll across the sprawling grounds, he finds the telepath gently closing the door to Ororo’s bedroom. He arches his eyebrows in question when the other man turns to him, and compliantly obeys when gestured into his own room. Xavier joins him, rubbing tiredly at his temple. 

“A lightening storm is coming,” he says quietly. “With so much energy in the atmosphere she can’t sleep easily, so I helped her get some rest.” 

“Do you have no rules when it comes to slipping into other people’s minds?” 

“I’ve many,” Xavier answers. “More, indeed, than I have time to tell you. I break them regularly, but I do feel terrible about that, so I suppose there’s some hope for me yet.”

“You don’t concern yourself with _privacy?_ ”

“Can you avoid feeling the hum and thrum of metal all around you, locate where it sits, its exact composition?”

Erik pauses, “No,” he admits. 

“Neither can I hope to avoid picking up on surface thoughts, catching stray strings of reasoning from unguarded minds. I cannot ask everyone to mind themselves around me, more than you could demand metal to stop existing around you. But I only dip below the surface when I feel it’s necessary or when called upon to do so.”

“And what precisely gives you the right to judge when it’s necessary and what you can do?” the question comes out more harshly than Erik means, but Xavier is reading his mind as keeping up with his thoughts, unoffended. 

“I can only do what I can, Erik. I can only be what I am. No more and certainly no less. I never said I don’t make mistakes, but you can trust that when I do something, it will be because I believe it to be the right thing to do just then.”

“What if it turns out to be a mistake?”

“Then I will have been wrong,” Xavier answers softly, blue eyes almost alight in the darkness of the room. “I’ll live with that knowledge. Life will go on. Eventually, I’ll be wrong again—and I’ll live with that mistake, as well.” 

Xavier leaves him to himself then, in his dark room facing the open gardens, and despite the fact he is two floors away and at the other side of the manor, Erik can tell when the telepath goes to sleep: a drowsy, encompassing calm settles over him like a warm blanket, drawing him kindly into sleep. 

The following days go on much the same—training with Xavier in the morning, sometimes the two of them and sometimes joined by random students who hope to keep up with Xavier’s murderous pace and don’t always succeed. It seems to Erik they make an effort to train with the telepath at least once, whenever he is around. He doesn’t know whether it is because he pushes them much further than anyone else, or because they seek simply to bask momentarily in the glare of his single-minded attention. Xavier drives everyone hard, runs them almost to the ground, but knows when to tell them to retreat, and never takes no for an answer. 

He’s demanding and forceful with everyone, but not as demanding as he is with himself—and with Erik.

Him, he allows to hover at his pleasure, quickly overcoming his instinct to stop when Erik does, at the beginning easily leaving him behind. Erik hasn’t been as challenged as he is now in years, and he struggles to keep pace, somewhat confused at the surge of excitement and pride he feels when, at the end of the morning, Xavier and him are the only ones left standing. 

Within a week, Erik completes a training session alongside the telepath, and learns with astonishment he’s the first one to have ever been able to do so, besides the mysterious, still-absent Raven Xavier. 

The morning of the next day Erik trots down to the kitchen ready for training and finds Xavier dressed as sharply as he’s ever seen him, with a white button-up over dark finely-tailored slacks. His short hair is still wet from a shower and curling at the nape of his neck.

“All wrung out?” he asks, arching a brow. 

Xavier grins, “I’m going to be gone for a while.”

Erik is instantly suspicious. “Where, and who’s going with you?”

The man waves a hand, “I’m going alone. I’ll be back before you know it. Keep training,” he gets up, picks up the jacket slung carefully over the back of his chair and a slung-over leather bag. “I want you to reduce your time by ten minutes when I come back.”

Erik huffs, “I only barely manage to finish the circuit, you madman.” 

“Well, you’re not pushing yourself if you know you can do it, are you?” 

“Where are you going? What are you doing?” Erik’s patience is running thin. He stalks to the shorter man, but the telepath pins him with a blade-like look, and Erik freezes mid-step.

There is a long, tense moment as they stare at each other. Erik is unsure of how a man so much shorter and thinner than him can command such unbelievable presence, but it feels as though even the air he inhales belongs by all rights to Xavier, and he is only borrowing it. 

Then Xavier smiles, gentle and soft and tranquil. 

“Stick around, yes?”

Xavier leaves. 

Erik stays. 

Two days later in the evening, Erik is settling in one of the chairs in Xavier’s study with a glass of single-malt and a book when the man himself walks quietly into the room. 

“Ah,” he says with a pleased smile. “I’m glad it’s you, then. I’d rather feared I would have to speak to the children about meddling with my liquor cabinet.” 

Erik takes a swallow, unapologetic, and tilts his head congenially, “I have to say. Damn good stuff.” 

Xavier laughs briefly. He shrugs out of his coat, movements stiff and graceless, and drops into the chair in front of him. Under the lamplight Erik can see the right shoulder of his dark sweater is soaked in blood. He sits up abruptly, alarmed, but Xavier waves a hand. 

“It’s stopped now. Be a dear and pour me a drink. I’ll stitch it up in a little while.” 

Unsure but reluctant to impose himself on the weary man, Erik pours the scotch and sits it on the low chess table between them. After a brief hesitation, he stands up and retrieves the med kit from the spot he knows Xavier keeps it. It can’t take him more than three minutes to return to the telepath’s side, but when he rests the kit next to the scotch, Xavier is asleep. 

Erik has seen Xavier train. He can’t even begin to comprehend what can bring someone like him to such monumental fatigue. 

He feels the impulse to cut through the sweater and look at the wound himself—but he remembers all too well that Xavier can’t bear being touched, and he doesn’t dare wake him. Whatever he’s been through, it seems he needs the rest more than he needs the medical aid. It feels completely wrong to leave him there, sleeping on the chair alone with an open wound, but there’s little else he can do, so that’s how he leaves him. 

The next morning, Xavier shows up early for training. 

And so it continues.


	5. Chapter 5

Or so it continues, until a month later Xavier returns from one of his excursions to find Erik, once again, comfortably installed in his study. 

“Do you not like your rooms?” he asks, blinking. 

“They don’t come with a stocked bar, but other than that they’re fine.” 

“Well, you should be… sleeping, or something,” Xavier frowns. 

Erik notices immediately the way he’s favoring his right side, but it’s not the first time Xavier’s come home hurt, and despite himself Erik has learn to breathe through it. What’s not normal, however, is the way he seems to be having trouble stringing thoughts. Usually when he’s suffered any kind of head trauma you can count on him coming apart at the seams, but not having difficulty _thinking._

Erik hates that he’s gotten used to it, especially because Xavier won’t let him come along. They’ve gone over it several times, but Xavier stonewalls like the best of them.

But still—there’s nothing unusual about Xavier’s behavior until he takes a step forward and suddenly crashes hard to a knee, gasping. Erik scrambles to his feet, crossing the room to crouch next to him. 

“Where are you hurt? Show me.”

“Ribs,” Xavier rasps. 

Erik moves to pull up his sweater, and curses when Xavier flinches violently. 

“Give me your fucking gloves,” he hisses, fisting his hand on the man’s clothes to keep him up on his side. 

Xavier smiled weakly, “My hands are smaller than yours. But—my father, he wore gloves. In the desk, in… a drawer, somewhere. Black leather.”

Erik gets up and strides to the desk, gripping the metal handles of the topmost drawers and beginning o rifle quickly through the first. When that one yields nothing he moves onto the next, slamming the abandoned one shut with his mind as he simultaneously pulls open the one below it. 

It takes him three drawers to find them, and by that time Xavier’s settled for lying on his side on the floor, gasping wetly. He’s not coughing up blood, though; small mercies. The gloves fit Erik’s hands perfectly, as if they were sewn especially for him, and the leather is worn and soft. Now free to comfortably manhandle Xavier, he yanks up sweater and shirt and looks at the darkening bruise over his ribs. 

“Feels broken,” Xavier murmurs. 

“Call Hank,” Erik says urgently, unsure as to what to do with broken fucking ribs. 

“Can’t,” Xavier’s voice trails off, eyes sliding shut. “Shutting down.”

Erik’s been warned of this by Moira—when in great stress, Xavier will either unfold devastatingly or shut down like a machine—it depends entirely on his mood at the moment. When angry he will lash out, when sad or scared he’ll fold inwards. The thing is Xavier is as unpredictable as the weather, moods swinging from one side to the other as fast as a breath. 

_He hasn’t folded inwards in months_ , Moira said. 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Erik says harshly, darting forward to catch Xavier’s head and lift it off the floor. “Star right here with me. Call Hank. You need a medic.” 

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can—your mind is your own, you tell it what to do. Now do as I say!”

In the split second right after he says the words he remembers them in another voice, and he knows it’s the wrong thing to say. Then he knows nothing else, until he’s waking up abruptly, choking on an inhale of air and scrambling away from someone’s hands. 

“It’s ok, you’re ok!” Moira says, raising her hands in an innocent gesture, sitting back on her heels. 

“What—what happened?” Erik looks around wildly, disoriented and dislocated. The last thing he remembers is Xavier, crumpled in the floor like a broken doll. 

“You triggered him,” Moira explains sadly. “He has these triggers—things that make him lash out like a snake, sometimes. You never really know what might set him off.”

“But—I don’t understand. I was talking, and then… nothing. Complete blackout.” 

“You were lucky, trust me. A couple of years back you wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly. I’d only known him for two months when an agent from the FBI triggered him; he’s still in a coma.” 

Erik drops his head to his hands, but curiously he’s not in pain—he feels strange and light-headed, like perhaps he’s drank one shot too many, but it’s nothing like what he felt after Xavier attacked him that one time he brushed his skin. This feels more like the relief of having broken through to the surface of the water after being caught in the undertow. 

“He’s a goddamn public menace,” he mumbles, and sighs. “Is he alright?”

“Three broken ribs,” Moira’s shoulders slump. “He won’t be going anywhere for a while, so I guess the children will be happy.” 

“Moira,” Erik levels a look at her. “Where does he go when he leaves? What is he doing?” 

“Sometimes it’s CIA missions, and I sit with him and we plan it together—but most of the time, I ask and he sidesteps the question.”

Erik knows what she means—whenever _he_ asks, Xavier dismisses him. It’s clear to Erik that he handles Moira’s curiosity with quite a lot more care than he does Erik’s, but that’s alright—Xavier won’t treat him with kid gloves. He appreciates that. It makes everything somehow more real, for him, than it is for Moira McTaggart, who Xavier seems to trust, only not nearly enough. 

That is, assuming Xavier trusts anyone but himself and his sister. 

Erik staggers to his feet and runs a hand through his hair, rolls his shoulders. 

He shrugs off Moira’s hand when she makes to catch his arm as he goes past, and throws her a look of warning over a shoulder as he pushes open the door to Xavier’s vast bedroom. 

He finds the telepath dozing lightly on his back, covers and sheets folded carefully down to his thighs so as to avoid putting any sort of pressure on his ribs. His learn torso is wrapped up in immaculate white bandages, hipbones jutting out against the pale skin of his trim hips, above the low-riding waistband of his dark pajama pants. Erik is somewhat mesmerized by the fact the man’s skin is completely unblemished, unlike his own, covered in scars. 

He rises languidly to consciousness as Erik tugs on the edges of the gloves still fit in his hands to make sure they’re secure, and then makes a cursory investigation of the medical attention the telepath has received. 

_I’m fine_ , Xavier’s mind whispers, a low hum of drowsy peace accompanying his words. Erik searches for and quickly spots the bottle of pain killers on the bedside table. 

“What are you doing to yourself, Xavier?” he asks lowly, looking down at him on the bed. 

_I’m only… I try to help._

“How are you helping anyone by getting hurt like this?” 

_One warning_ , Xavier says vaguely. 

Erik’s gaze grows sharp. “Are you hunting down Shaw’s associates on your own?”

_It’s not like that. I give them a warning and walk away. I only go back if they move again, if they attack. I try to help the humans. I don’t want anyone to die._

Erik breathes deeply and makes a serious effort to hold onto his temper, though it feels like it’s trying to claw out of his chest and throttle Xavier where he lays. 

“But why go on your own? I’ve been hunting Shaw down for years. Why won’t you let me come with you?” 

_You’re safe here._

“Don’t fool yourself—I’m not safe anywhere. If Shaw had half a mind to find me and slit my throat nothing could stop him, not even your army of half-trained mutants. He’s waiting for me to find him, just like he knows I will. So why aren’t you using me as bait?”

 _He wants me dead more than he wants you,_ Xavier said bluntly. 

“You don’t know that.”

_But I do. I’ve seen his mind. He doesn’t think you could ever really bring him down—you’re just annoying to him. But me—I could rip everything apart if only I could get my hands on him, because I know my way into his mind._

Erik thought perhaps he wanted to feel offended at being so easily dismissed, but Xavier wasn’t trying to belittle him, he was simply speaking the truth as he saw it. Erik could fault the man for many a thing, but not for telling the truth.

“So you be the weapon, I’ll be the shield,” Erik says calmly. “I’ve never gotten as badly hurt in any of my hunts as you do in your average one. You’re perilously careless. And I know how to deal with Shaw’s minions as well as you do.”

 _You’re safe here_ , Xavier insists, stubborn. 

“Only until you get yourself killed. Then no one will be safe; not me, not your precious children.” 

_Why have you stayed, then? If you think I won’t do absolutely everything within my abilities to protect you—_

“I know _that_ ,” Erik interrupts impatiently. “Foolish as it is. I know you’d jump right in front of a train if you were convinced that would keep me from getting my knees scraped.” 

_Then why?_

“I’ve nowhere else to go,” Erik replies simply. “This is a place of refuge for mutants—for my people. I can be myself here. I can even help, sometimes. I—this place you’ve built. It lets people be a part of something bigger than themselves. I want that.”

He pauses. 

“But as much as I want that, I’m not your pet, Xavier. You can’t just leave me here like the rest of the children and go about your little suicide mission and hope I’ll stay quietly behind. I’m a weapon—so _use_ me.” 

Xavier’s eyes fall closed, but he doesn’t sink back into unconsciousness. 

_You can call me Charles_ , he says gently, after a while. 

Erik makes a vague sound of agreement in his throat and sits on the edge of the bed, pulling up his leg under his weight. Charles cringes instinctively away.

“I’m not going to touch you, relax,” Erik says, rather exasperated. “Why is it so painful for you to be touched, anyway? I’m not sure I understand.” 

The telepath’s eyes opened halfway, lashes heavy. 

Suddenly and unexpectedly there’s an image of two bodies in a bed, flushed skin and a drop of sweat. 

_He liked mi skin._

Now it’s Erik’s turn to cringe. 

_Oh, I—forgive me. The sedatives hurt my focus. Well, I suppose that cat’s out of the box now. But no, it’s not as you imagine—although I wouldn’t lie and say I’m fine with physical intimacy of any sort, after that._

Erik rubs his forehead, dropping his head to his hands. 

“You need to come with a filter.”

_I do. It’s you that I—I’m sorry, Erik. I’ll watch myself more, I promise. At any rate, though—no, it’s not that physical contact is painful for me, it’s that…_

He pauses, seems to struggle to gather his rampant thoughts into a single, coherent line of reasoning. He licks his lips, struggling to sit up a little and face Erik more solidly. 

“Are you familiar with the psychological theory of the absolute terror field?” 

Erik takes a moment to consider. “I can’t say that I am.”

“Well, it’s—a sort of barrier, a shield, which we build around ourselves. Most of the time it translates to the physical distance that you maintain with other people, much as Rogue studiously keeps about a meter of free space around herself. The vast majority of people are hardly aware of it at all, but others, most especially those trained in any sort of combat skills, mind it quite a lot. It is a threshold of violation of personal space.”

Intrigued and interested, Erik nods. It’s fast becoming clear that Charles is a good enough professor. 

“In your mind, this threshold is the barriers that you put between yourself and others in mental intimacy, such as a difficulty to open up and trust people enough to let them become close friends. This field is something that we all have, instinctively and naturally, although the distance it requires varies from person to person. Normally when someone has been violated in any way, this shield pushes forward, and the victim may become very distrustful—but anyway, I’m not going to go into that right now.”

“So there’s a problem with your absolute terror field?” Erik frowns. 

“I don’t have one,” Charles’ shoulders slump. 

“You said everyone does,“ Erik arches a brow. 

“Oh, I did, to be sure—as a telepath, I suspect my absolute terror field would be quite flexible. But you see—the field is what would theoretically prevent me from slipping unaware into someone’s mind, against my will. The field would keep you out as much as it would keep _me, inside_ —because it is a defense mechanism, you see?”

“I follow.” 

“Well, I suppose Shaw’s reasoning led him to believe a telepath that could hold himself back like that wasn’t as useful as one without any sort of barriers. Over the seven years we were with him, Shaw systematically tore down and apart any defense I attempted to make to preserve my shield—until he obliterated it entirely.”

Erik stares. 

“I can’t—it’s not that it hurts, Erik. It’s that if I touch you, I’ll lose myself inside you, and lose _you_ inside myself. Most of the time, I… panic, and well, you know how Shaw teaches you to react to panic.”

_Attack, Erik—fear won’t keep you safe, but a knife will._

“God,” Erik lowers his head to his shaking hands, feeling sick to the stomach. “Why—he didn’t—he didn’t do that to me, Charles. Why was he so much more… _destructive_ , with you?” 

Charles sighs, “Only one man has the answer to that question, my friend, and it isn’t me.”

“What did—“ he halts, swallowing convulsively, tasting bile in his mouth. He wants to know but won’t dare ask, he can’t, won’t be able to stomach the answer—

“He’d force himself on me,” Charles says quietly, picking up on the question that Erik hasn’t voiced. “But not the way you think. He’d think up things he wanted me to do to him—and if I got them wrong, even the smallest detail, he’d hurt Raven. He wanted me to pick them up through his skin, not with my usual telepathy.”

“She was—she—he made her—“

“Watch,” Charles says, not unkindly. “Yes.”

Erik fists his hands in his hair, shaking like a leaf. 

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” Charles asks gently, sitting up with some effort and wincing. “I can—“

Erik leaps to his feet, strides away from the bed to the window and fumbles with the latch. In the end he rips it off and throws it away, wrenches the window panes widely open. He gulps in fresh, cool night air, dropping his head to rest atop his left wrist where his fist has damaged the metal window-frame. 

“So,” he rasps after what feels like ages. “Raven’s the only one you can bear to touch.” 

“We know everything about each other. I always know where she ends and I begin.” 

“But you could—you could train yourself, build the shield back up.” 

“I would need someone to help me,” Charles says gently, as if trying to explain death to an infant. “Who would want me to see everything that’s ever gone through their minds, Erik? There would be no way for that person to safeguard any memory, any thought—I’d see it all. And in turn, they’d see everything I’ve gone through. _Everything_ , Erik.” 

Erik continues to stare out into the night, to the well-trimmed, dutifully cared for grounds of Xavier Hall. They’re not flat by any means—hills, valleys, little ponds surrounded by trees here and there, a lake in the distance, reflecting mirror-like the moon and the stars. 

“Erik,” Charles says tenderly. “You may go to bed. You need not stay.” 

Erik turns, startled. 

“I’m not—“

“You don’t want to be here,” Charles smiled sadly. The smile is gentle and his eyes so blue, too-blue to belong to any living creature. He seems so small and broken alone in the huge bed, alone in everything. 

“I’ll… come back in the morning,” Erik says, because he doesn’t know what he feels or what he wants, but maybe Charles does—he can see into his mind, after all. Maybe he can glean some sense out of the jumbled mess that is his thoughts. 

“Good night, Erik,” Charles says quietly as Erik closes the door. 

Mindless of where his feet take him, he goes down the stairs and across the house to the hall, opens the lock with his mind and slips outside to the night air. He walks for a long time, wandering aimlessly through the grounds. Finally he settles under a great willow tree near the lake, and there stays until daybreak and later. 

With the sun rather high in the sky, it’s Ororo that finds him there, parting the branches with a small hand and peeking in shyly. When Erik makes no move to reject her, simply stares, she gives a step forward and lets the branches fall back like a curtain. She comes closer and offers him what she has in her arms. 

His leather jacket. 

“The Professor said you might be cold,” she says quietly. 

Erik is very cold, inside and out. There’s nothing anyone can do about how he feels inside, but the jacket will warm his arms. He takes it from her hands, shrugs into it gratefully, but doesn’t move to stand. 

“Do you want to be alone?” 

He’s not sure. He shakes his head, and doesn’t protest when she sits at his side and hugs her legs, resting her chin on her bony knees. 

“I could make the day warmer,” she says idly after a while. 

Erik smiles, “Not on my account. I’m used to the cold.”

“You should come inside and have breakfast.” 

Erik doesn’t reply. Ororo doesn’t insist. 

“You could tell me about it,” she says kindheartedly, peeking up at him through thick black lashes. Tentatively, seemingly unsure of how she’ll be received, she reaches out and grabs his hand. 

Erik closes his eyes. 

“There’s something I think only I can do, to help someone,” he hesitates momentarily, “And it terrifies me.” 

Ororo is quiet for a moment. 

“Are you the only one that can do it?” she asks sympathetically. 

“I think so, yes.”

“And does it _need_ to be done?”

Erik opens his eyes, thinks of the way Charles flinches to the touch. Thinks of the way Ororo always seeks to be touched, held, comforted. He squeezes her hand maybe too roughly, but she doesn’t complain.

“Yes.” 

“Then… if someone has to do it, and it has to be you… there’s really no room for you to be scared, Erik.” 

He stares at her, her small childish face and her wide old eyes. 

“Out of the mouth of babes,” he breaths finally, smiling tremulously. He shakes his head and gets to his feet, pulling on her hand to get her up too. 

“Come on, then. This will need some planning, and I’m sure you have homework.”

“I think I’m dropping German,” Ororo says sullenly. “German hates me. I’m horrible at it.” 

Erik gives her a look. 

“Out of the question.”


	6. Chapter 6

It takes the average human from 6 to 8 weeks to recover fully from a broken rib. 

Charles Xavier is a healthy, fit young man of excellent health, so it’s no surprise that, by the sixth week, he’s already able to join in some of the training exercise so long as he doesn’t overextend himself. It would be impossible for him to overdo it even if he had a mind to do so; for once able to have an active part in their professor’s recovery process, the children have kept a hawk’s eye on him nearly every single minute he’s been out of bed. 

Erik’s continued on his own training at their usual rhythm, neither encouraging nor discouraging whatever student chose to join him. 

Near the end of the second week after Xavier’s return, Erik find himself in the hall with Charles as he greets a new student—the boy seems to be able to control fire… or rather should be able to control fire, if he could control his gift at all—when front door flies abruptly open. 

Erik immediately steps forward, pushing the kid behind him, but Charles is laughing out delightedly. 

“Raven!” 

Ah—the mysteriously absent Raven Xavier, finally home. Erik recognizes her as the girl that met him in the alley that day in Oxford almost four months back, long wavy blond hair, soft brown gold-specked eyes. But as he watches she changes, like a wave of scaled turning directions on her skin. Her skin is a deep shade of blue, her hair a fiery red, and her eyes the gold of a lion’s.

Charles steps forward to catch her in a fierce hug, exuberant in his joy, and her laugh is loud and happy. They pause, still in each other’s arms, as Charles presses his forehead to hers and closes his eyes. He seems to find some solace in the corners of her mind, and the girl grins, blue lips stretching over shockingly white teeth. 

It’s not jealousy, Erik knows. Erik recognizes jealousy easily—he’s well acquainted with it, has felt it every time he saw a child and then saw the mother and remembered digging his mother’s grave with his bare hands, every time he see someone who didn’t go to a concentration camp. So it’s not jealousy, he knows. But it hurts, all the same, a small pain, like a cut that stings, a blossom of hurt that unfurls in his chest like a dove’s wings when their skins touch. 

For the first time since Charles revealed the full extent of what Shaw did to him, Erik realizes for all of his fear, the man is touch starved. 

He carefully tucks the thought away. 

The next day Charles come looking for him after he’s finished the training circuit. 

“You have lowered your time,” he says with a smile. 

Erik, winded and breathless, nods and snatches he towel the telepath offers. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Charles starts. “About letting you come with me in the excursions—“

“You’re not _letting_ g me,” Erik interrupts with a look. “I’m coming whether you like it or not.” 

Charles’ eyebrows go up, “Well, that’s hardly _polite_. I was going to say—“

“I’m German, not English. I don’t need to be polite.” 

Charles huffs, “You’re insufferable this morning. What’s your problem, then? Sex-deprived?” 

“Are you offering?” Erik smiles like a crocodile. 

The telepath rolls his eyes, turns on his heels and stalks away. “Never you mind, then. I think I’ll leap off a cliff before I take you anywhere with me.” 

_You childish idiot_ , Erik thinks, fighting a smile. _Let me shower and meet me in the grounds._

Half an hour later, Erik is lying lazily in the grass by the lake when Charles’ shadow falls across his stomach. Erik looks up at him, squinting in the sunlight and blowing smoke off his nostrils. 

“I think you smoke too much, my friend,” Charles says, letting himself fall at his side. 

“That’s fair. I think I don’t care about your opinion.” 

Charles grimaces, “Wanker.”

Erik pats him companionably in the knee and counts it as a win when the man doesn’t flinch. It’s taken a while for Charles to get used to those fleeting, strictly-against-fabric touches, but Erik isn’t discouraged. He’s intent on getting Xavier accustomed to contact, even if not skin-to skin. Yet. 

“I don’t know that it’s such a good idea, Erik,” Charles says seriously. Erik sits up, leaning his elbows on his knees and breathing out smoke like a dragon. “I know you’re very capable, but Shaw really does want you dead, and I don’t want to risk it.” 

“He wants you dead too, and you’re perfectly fine with risking _that_.” 

“It’s _my_ life.”

“And this is mine,” Erik counters, quick as a snake. “Mine to do with as I please. And if I find I want to go with you and, I don’t know, leap off cliffs as seems to be your habit—then you don’t have a right to stop me.” 

“Neither am I obligated to indulge you,” Charles replies, eyes hard. 

“You take your sister with you,” Erik retorted. “Even though I can tell you don’t want to. So?”

“There’s not much I can deny Raven,” the Englishman admits. “But I… it’s different with her. I can tell how she’ll react at any given time. I _know_ her. I know what she can take and how far I can stretch her. With you, it’s—you’re unpredictable and uncontrollable. I never know how you’ll take something.”

“You could always _ask_.” 

“Alright, how will you react if Shaw tries to rape me in front of you?”

Erik’s throat sizes and he chokes on smoke. 

Charles huffs, “You don’t even _know_. I can’t trust you.”

“I’ll rip him to pieces before he even tries that,” Erik says quietly, and it hangs in the air between them like something too heavy to sink and yet too light to be dismissed. It gets stuck in Erik’s throat, sticky and thick like syrup—because he _means_ it, and Charles can tell.

The telepath sighs, drops his forehead to his hand. 

“It’s not about me, Erik. I mean, yes—yes, I want Shaw dead, of course I do. Very much so. But before we can even think of that we need to tear down his defenses and that means systematically taking down his accomplices. I know you’ve hunted down nearly every human that helped him torture you—I don’t fault you for that, although your methods are… hard to swallow, for me. But you’ve only hunted down those who hurt _you_. I want Shaw dead because he’s a menace to society. You want him dead because he killed your mother. Do you see how it’s not the same?” 

He looks up, straightening, and stares out across the lake as if he’s seeing something beyond the veil of reality, something Erik can’t begin to grasp.

“Justice and revenge?” Erik inhales from his cigarette, eyes fixed on Charles’ profile. 

“No, I… well, yes, I suppose justice _would_ be served if he died. But Erik, he’s done… so much _damage_. I want safety. I want to be able to live and not be afraid of my own shadow. I want to… I wish I could be close to someone. And he ruined that for me, and I hate him for that—but most of all I hate the idea of him doing that to someone _else_. I can’t—I can’t live with that possibility.” 

Erik continues to look at him for a long time, at the strong curve of his shoulders and the straight line of his back, the proud tilt of his head. This is a man that’s been destroyed and pulled himself back together on his own. It’s been a long time since Erik’s been ashamed of how fixated he is on Charles; that’s in the past. 

The telepath smiles softly. Perhaps he’s caught some of that thought, but if he has he doesn’t zero in on it. His eyes are vibrant and alight when he turns back to him. 

“I’m tired, Erik. I just want this to be over. If I could cut across everything and just reach him and kill him oh, I would do it in a _heartbeat_. But that’s not how it works.”

“I understand that,” Erik admits. “But why must you do it alone?”

“What if he _gets_ you, Erik?” Charles asks, tone low. “What if he catches you and I can’t—“

“I’m a grown man, Charles, not one of your students. I’m your _equal_. You don’t need to protect me.” 

This isn’t anything new. Erik knows Charles sees him as an equal, or he wouldn’t treat him differently than he does the children. The telepath stares at him curiously, as if puzzled that Erik might be making this argument, not because he’s never thought about it before, clearly—but rather, it seems, because he didn’t expect Erik to call him on it. 

“Besides,” Erik adds, taking a lazy drag from his cigarette. “I know what Shaw can do to me. I’m not going into this blind; that makes all the difference.” 

It does, and Charles knows it. 

The telepath lowers himself to the grass and stares at the sky, folding his hands beneath his head, contemplative and at peace. 

“We’re brothers, you and I,” Erik exhales smoke through parted lips. “And I can set fire to cars as well as the best of them.” 

Charles laughs. 

Later that evening when the house is at rest, Erik makes his way to Charles’ study and doesn’t bother to knock before opening the door. Charles always knows where everyone is, whether by choice or not, and can easily reject visitors with half a thought. Nothing stops Erik from entering, though, and he can tell Charles isn’t sleeping—you can always tell when Charles is sleeping because so is everyone else, almost automatically. There are ways around this, but Erik hasn’t asked to be taught yet—he can certainly use the sleep aid. 

He finds the telepath sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, one arm thrown over the back. His sister is reclining lazily against his chest, head fallen back on his shoulder as she sleeps. Her temple brushes his chin. Charles is reading aloud from a book about—

“Genetics?” Erik arches a brow. 

“It always sends her right off,” Charles smiles ruefully. 

“I can imagine. It seems a rather random subject, though.” 

“Random? I’m a genetics professor.”

Erik pauses, “You are? I didn’t know that.”

“You never asked, you self-absorbed prick,” but the man’s tone is fond enough, so Erik smiles and lowers himself to a nearby chair. 

“ _You_ never ask about _anything_ , you meddling, long-nosed brat.”

“I’ll have you know my nose is as much an Xavier heirloom as this house, sir. Some respect, please.” 

“I can see that. You Xaviers like everything big, don’t you?”

_Why, do you have something big you’d like to show me?_

Erik laughs out loud, “One of these days I’ll take you up on that and you’ll be in trouble. Anyway that’s not why I’m here. I was thinking about what you said earlier about not knowing how I’ll react to things or how I think. There’s a way around that. That’s a chess table, isn’t it? Where’s the set?”

Charles glances at the table in question, sitting between two comfortable chairs, and frowns slightly. 

“You know, that’s a good—oh, I know.”

He sends Erik the image of a wooden box resting atop a row of books in the topmost shelf against the wall. The German grins as he stands. 

“How convenient that you can do that. Can you send any kind of images to people’s heads?” he accompanies the question with a completely indecent mental image. 

Charles laughs, “How very high-brow of you, Erik.”

“Oh, that’s me—the _personification_ of intellectual pursuits. You might want to rearrange your sister.”

When Erik returns with the box, Raven lays stretched out comfortably on the couch and Charles is pouring drinks. 

“I didn’t know you could play,” he comments, settling on his chair. 

“Well, _play_. I know the absolute basics.” 

Charles grins, “So I’m going to have to _teach_ you?” 

Erik picks up a random piece and moves it, pointlessly and carelessly. “You know revenge is a busy business, it doesn’t leave much time for playing around and sitting and just being idle. Furthermore, _I’m_ not filthy rich, so—“

“You queen can’t do that. Christ, don’t—just, get your hands off my chess set and sit back, I’m starting over with you. You start with the—what are you even doing? That’s not—are you quite _sure_ you know how to play?” 

Erik doesn’t, but he doesn’t really care, either. He’s not trying to get Charles to be comfortable with the way he thinks. He’s trying to make him comfortable with his presence, his company, the way he moves and acts and how he speaks his mind. He needs Charles to know him—but more than anything else, they’re both going to need Charles to trust him. 

They spend the days like this—training in the mornings, classes in the afternoons, chess and drinks in the evenings. Often when Charles is busy in class Erik thumbs through some of the books in his library, teaching himself things he didn’t know, familiarizing himself with what Charles likes and how he likes it, how to best approach him. 

“I know what you’re doing,” Raven says sharply one afternoon when she finds him there, sitting at Charles’ desk, looking over sheets of piano music. The telepath plays beautifully, although he rarely indulges. 

Erik’s not above asking Ororo to insist Charles play her something. The first time he did, the girl just stared at him, but by the third she understood what he was doing, and once Charles had shooed them both out of his study, she’d turned to him, hands in her skinny waist, and given him a look. 

“You’re tall as a tree and you’re still ten years old, aren’t you?” 

Erik had to lean against the wall until he stopped laughing. 

“And what am I doing?” Erik asks easily, looking up from the music. He can read it, of course, but he can’t play a single note. 

“You’re trying to get closer to him. What I don’t understand is what you _want_.” 

Both her tone and her body language are aggressive as she leans over the desk, getting almost in his face, golden eyes aglow. She’s stunning, fascinating, one of the most beautiful things Erik has ever seen. He looks at her skin—vast, bare expanses of it firm and supple—and thinks only of her brother’s eyes. 

In the end, that’s what makes him tell her the truth. 

“Him,” he says simply. “I want him. All I can get of him.” 

Raven is stunned speechless. She straightens brusquely, lips drawing back as if about to growl—but the anger leaves her as quickly as it’s arrived. She swallows, her hands clench and unclench, indecisive. 

Finally she settles for a confused, “Why?” 

Erik stands slowly, eyes fixed on hers, and puts down the sheets of music, pentagrams with notes scribbled carelessly in pencil in Charles familiar handwriting. Charles’ own music—pieces he composes, sometimes, to settle his restless mind. 

“Because I want him, and Shaw can’t fucking have him.” 

For a moment, he thinks Raven is going to leap at his throat and rip it open with her teeth—her brother is _hers_ , he belongs to her, everything he’s done since he was thirteen it’s been for her, he’s only alive _because_ of her—but then she closes her eyes, and her shoulders seem to slump. 

Because Shaw can’t have him—but neither can _she_ be his refuge forever, the only shade in the endless expanse of deserted waste that is his mind. 

“What do you need?” she asks quietly. 

Erik looks down at the music. 

“Time.”

With Raven on his side, it’s much easier to manufacture situations in which Charles is forced to spend time with Erik. Someone has to go to town, after all, and if Raven’s got a headache, well. Erik doesn’t mind. Somewhat childishly and only because he can, Erik also drags Ororo in on it. 

“If he had pigtails,” the girl asks flatly one morning. “Would you pull them?”

Erik reaches over and pulls playfully at her right braid. Ororo is more than capable of taking care of herself—especially against Erik, who’ll back off as soon as she gives him a look—but she still gamely scowls and plays victim when Charles appears in the hallway, just out of class. 

“Are you tormenting the children again?” the geneticist asks, arching an unimpressed brow. The man’s eyebrows have a mind of their own. 

“He’s mean about my German,” Ororo says remorsefully. Oh, the girl can act. 

Charles releases a long-suffering sigh, “Come along then, Lehnsherr. Let’s find you something to do. Ororo, your German is _fine_.”

“It’s your French that’s horrible,” Erik says with a grin. 

Ororo pins him with her dark eyes, “My French is better than yours, vous laids arbres.”

“Did she just call me an ugly tree?” Erik barks out a laugh, even as Charles doubles over, peals of laugh spilling freely from his lips. 

“Come, Erik, let’s save you from out little Storm, you look like you need it.”

Then, _there_ —for the first time—Charles reaches a hand and closes his fingers over Erik’s wrist, loosely enough the man could easily break away. Erik can feel the heat of Charles’ hand through the fine leather of his glove. And it’s nothing, really—he’s just grabbing his wrist, but he’s doing it carelessly, easily, comfortably, he’s _touching him_. 

Erik moves with him to make sure not to break the hold, but before he turns the corner he catches a glimpse of Ororo’s face—eyes and mouth wide, cheeks flushed with happiness. 

Charles has Erik rearranging books alphabetically all afternoon, but somehow— _somehow_ —it’s worth it. Besides, it’s not as though Erik minds—he takes the opportunity to read many passages of several of them, making the process slow-going and possibly pointless. 

He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a forest of book piles, when Charles comes into the study in the evening. 

“Have you read this? I hate this author,” he shows him the cover of _Great Expectations_. “Whiny little rat.” 

“More respect with one of the greatest English authors, please.”

Erik grunts, “This is why you people lost your empire. All you did was whine about your goddamn weather and how very _hard_ your life was.” 

Charles breathes a put-upon sigh and takes the book form him, placing it carelessly on a shelf where it doesn’t belong. 

Erik heaves an offended huff, “Well, if you’re just going to complicate matters for me, why don’t you scamper along to drink tea somewhere?” 

“Hm,” Charles makes a thoughtful noise, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “Get up early tomorrow and be ready to leave.” 

Erik cuts his eyes up to him, going very still. 

“Where are we going?” he asks cautiously. 

Charles smiled that disarming, boy-like, iceberg smile. 

“Out, Erik. I’m taking you for a ride.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for taking this long except I hate, hate HATE editing for AO3. It sucks balls. Hairy balls. You're welcome for that mental image.

Erik’s learned to recognize when Charles will leave for one of his excursions because he wears different clothes. 

Normally comfortable in casual suits—impeccable cut and expensive fabrics, but certainly casual—Charles ordinarily gives the appearance of precisely what he is: a professor. 

In the mornings when he’s about to leave, though, he changes those suits for tighter fitting clothes—something that won’t bother the shoulder holster he’s never shown, but Erik knows he has. So Erik follows his example, and trades his usual polo shirts and slacks for a sharp grey suit and overcoat. He finds Charles already having breakfast at the table, and sits his own travel bag and coat next to his in an empty chair. 

He also finds the coffeepot half full of fresh coffee, and glances at Charles. 

“I thought you didn’t drink coffee. Something about your insomnia?” 

“I don’t. Raven made it.” 

Erik frowns, “She’s coming with us?”

It’s not that he minds Raven. It’s that he needs Charles to start relying on him, and he never will of he has Raven close at hand. He’ll always choose her. 

Charles glances at him briefly, slightly confused, and Erik knows he’s caught that thought. He doesn’t shy away from the telepath’s gaze, but rather arches a curious brow.

“She’s working with the CIA full-time. She has to go back because her holidays are over.” 

“She’s your spy?” Erik laughs quietly and settles on the chair at Charles’ right, even though there’s an entire table of empty chairs out of which he can choose. 

“I suppose,” the geneticist replies distractedly, eyes scanning his newspaper quickly. He hasn’t even looked up at Erik like he does sometimes when he sits too close, and Erik is careful not to spare much thought about it, lest the telepath freaks out. 

Sometimes he feels like he’s dealing with a skittish foal. 

“Are you going to be done with that anytime soon?” he asks, eyeing the newspaper over Charles’ shoulder. 

“You can have the politics part, it bores me to tears,” the geneticist answers, manipulating the pages until he finds what he’s looking for and hands it to Erik. 

“As a spy, you’re rather a lousy one,” Erik says, amused. “You should read everything. It all counts.”

“Well then, good thing I have you to do that for me now, don’t I?” 

Erik grins. It’s a bet—a calculated one, but a bet nonetheless. He lays the newspaper on the table and, below the table, pats Charles’ knee as he normally does, easily and without much fanfare—only this time his hand stays there. As he reads an article he feels Charles’ knee make a tiny little movement—like an aborted flinch, like he thinks he should pull sway but… doesn’t really want to, or know why he should. 

So his hand stays there, and Charles is unnaturally still for a few minutes, stiff and uncomfortable, but Erik simply continues to read. Eventually, Charles begins to relax. 

Erik can’t remember the last time Charles told him not to get used to touching him. He counts it as a win. 

They go to town with Charles’ battered old Cooper Mini. The man owns a castle, but some reason he’s don of this piece of broken down junk. 

“Oi,” Charles makes an offended noise, “ Don’t diss the car!” 

“You own a _Bentley_ , and we have to go in this old can?” 

“Oh, _do_ forgive me, good sir, used to travel in class, are you?”

“Well, _class_ —and maybe in something that’s not falling apart around you.” 

“I’ll have you know this car—you know what, never mind. Just—shut up, alright? Be quiet. Don’t say any more words.” 

Erik grins at the window. 

They don’t drive all the way, naturally. Only as far as New York City, where they leave Charles’ precious little can and board a plane to Paris. 

“Are you trying to imply something?” Erik asks once they get off the plane on French soil. 

“Other than that you need to work on your French?” 

Erik’s French is better than Charles’. He speaks it as if he were native. Charles speaks all languages with a slight accent, and a too-perfect, too-correct vocabulary that implies he’s learned it from books rather than speaking it constantly. 

The German gives him a sharp grin, “The city of love, Charles.”

“That’s Rome.”

Erik laughs, “Must you be different in everything?” 

“You wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t.”

Too true. 

Erik abandons his playful taunts when Charles explains there’s a certain banker in Paris that often finances Shaw’s antics—with old Nazi gold. 

“I understand if you feel you can’t—“ Charles starts quietly when they’re in the elevator, eyeing Erik doubtfully. Erik, however, is determined to keep his calm.

“I’m already here,” he grunts. “Stop coddling me. I used to use Nazi gold, myself. I think I’m rather entitled seeing as it’s made of all the things they stole from my people.” 

Hesitantly, Charles touches his arm very briefly in a show of support, and immediately withdraws. Erik gives him a look, but Charles is staring at the elevator doors, hand clenched in a fist. Erik wonders if the geneticist has to resist the temptation to indulge in some sort of contact with him. The idea is thrilling. 

“You need to stop that,” Charles says brusquely, pinning him with too-blue eyes. 

“Make me,” Erik snaps, and he has to struggle against the urge to pin Charles against the wall—just then the doors slide open, and in a fraction of a second they’re both calm and composed, showing nothing. 

Beneath his skin, Erik can feel anger roiling, braiding itself together with something else, deeper and stronger. He can’t identify it yet, but he has enough mind to suspect what it might be, and he doesn’t particularly care, right now, that Charles isn’t even attempting to conceal he’s reading his mind. 

But Charles is nothing if not disciplined. He turns his mind away, leaving behind simply a weak link through which thoughts may come and go only if they so will it. The temptation to abuse the trust and continue the conversation is great, but Erik pushes it down. 

The banker is not alone—there’s a bodyguard inconspicuously tucked away in the far corner of the room, and he has a gun with him. Erik sends this information down the link and realizes Charles is fully aware of it, since he’s in both the banker’s and the bodyguard’s mind. 

_I’ll take the pawn, you take the king_ , Erik thinks. 

Charles assent is a simple, pure feeling of acceptance in the link, too strong to be only about this mission—Charles has just understood Erik is letting take the lead. 

Well, wonderful. That’s precisely what Erik is after. He wants Charles to understand he can control Erik when it matters. 

Since they’re playing this game and have already decided who’s who, instead of sitting down Erik stands behind Charles’ chair, staring fixedly at the bodyguard. Two kings, two pawns—now to see who wins the match. 

Erik expects some kind of foreplay to the inevitable violence, but with Charles in the game he really should have known better. 

It takes him a fraction of a second to realize Charles has gone silent and the banker has gone unnaturally still. Erik is left to deal with the guard without any sort of aid—not that he needs it, mind. But he has to act quickly, because he doesn’t want to give the man time to realize something is off, or even worse—sound an alarm. 

And sound an alarm is precisely what the man means to do as soon as Erik raises a hand. Erik catches his watch with his power and takes hold of his handgun from where he stabs behind Charles’ chair, and gently, ever so gently, presses the muzzle to the guard’s jaw. 

Charles hasn’t moved an inch, still sitting elegantly in the chair, legs crossed, posture relaxed. 

Calm now that everything is under control, Erik paces idly to the bodyguard, hands in his pockets, shoulders loose. He stops inches from the man’s terrified, pale face. 

“Just so we understand each other,” he says softly. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone I will find you, and I will be very crossed. You don’t want someone that can do what I can to be crossed at you, believe me.” 

The safety drops down with a quiet, ominous _click._

“Erik,” Charles says quietly, rising gracefully from his chair.

Charles is moving to the lift with a calm, sedate pace that implies he’s leaving because he feels like leaving, and he could just as well sit in a while longer. He’s got the authority to so whatever he likes. Falling into place like a well-oiled machine part, Erik follows in his wake, fitting his hat back on his head with a rueful tilt of his head. He smiles politely and banker and guard until the doors of the lift hide them from view. 

He’s normally have the sense to wait until they’re in the street to ask, but Charles has this lovely advantage in that sense. 

_I delivered the warning_ , Charles speaks into his mind, tone thoughtful—pun intended, Erik supposes. I also got a strange piece of information. He thinks Shaw is en route to Cuba.

_So he’s playing communist now?_

_I don’t think so_ , Charles sounds doubtful. _Not his profile, is it?_

_There’s only one thing that man loves more than money, and it’s power._ Erik thoughtlessly reaches forward and pushes the door open, ushering Charles out before him as he glances over his shoulder briefly. No one seems to be looking at the strangely. Still—best not to linger. 

Charles nods in assent, _That’s what I think, as well. Yet—_

He’s cut off when a fat, heavy drop of rain falls on his nose. He looks so hilariously bewildered that Erik laughs out loud, but a moment later it’s pouring, and he’s pushing the telepath to a nearby café to get shelter. 

“Where’s Ororo when we need her?” he laughs as he shakes out his hat. Charles is shrugging out of his black coat, grinning widely. 

“What are you so happy about?” Erik asks, instantly suspicious. “You’re scaring me.”

“My happiness is scary to you? You’re a dreadful friend.” 

“I happen to know you,” Erik retorts. “And you’re always planning something. That minds of yours never stops, not for a second.”

“I can’t _make_ it,” Charles rolls his eyes, and suddenly all the playful mood drops the ground and shatters, and Erik knows, instantly, that Charles has just slammed up against an old, painful memory. 

“I don’t want you to,” Erik says easily, intent on keeping Charles from sinking. That’s what Raven told him to do— _don’t let him take you with him, pull him back up, make him turn away from the memories. He’s made peace with it all, but sometimes he just… drowns._

“I don’t want you to hold back with me.”

Charles huffs, “You say that now because you’re as ignorant as a child. You don’t even know what it means for me to stop holding back. What do you think happens when you break down a dam, Erik? The river destroys everything in its path.”

“I,” Erik says, calm and cold as frost. “am no _child_.” 

“You are when it comes to this. You hardly understand anything I—“

“Your sister told me,” Erik snaps savagely, and when Charles makes to move back away from him his hand shoots out and he grabs the telepath by the wrist, his grip bruising. “She told me everything you were too scared to tell me.” 

Charles’ anger is sudden and hot like wildfire. 

“She had no business telling you anything about me. Let go of me right now, Erik, or so help me God you will regret it for the rest of your _short life_.” 

There’s a threat there as plain and clear as sunlight, and Erik knows from experience that Charles Xavier doesn’t make threats he’s not willing to deliver on. Erik has only one advantage over the telepath now, and it’s that he’s found a place he belongs where he previously had none. He can’t— _won’t_ live, won’t allow himself to be pushed out of life at Xavier Hall.

It’s manipulating and low, but it gets the job done. 

Charles sits back, making a disgusted noise. 

“Fine, I get it. I won’t get rid of you, just—seriously, unhand me. You’re hurting me.” 

Erik compromises by releasing his arm and lopping a finger around Charles’ gloved ones. The telepath tries to jerk away, and Erik gives a warning tug and a glare. Charles curses and turns away, hand going limp as if saying _do your worst, see if I care._

“You’re too easy to steer,” Erik comments idly. 

_You’re an insufferable little shit, yet I don’t you call you up on it._

“Didn’t you just?” 

Charles huffs again and attempts to reclaim ownership of his hand, but when Erik persists in keeping his grip he gives up again, turning his face back. He looks confused and tired. 

“I don’t—what do you _want_ from me, Erik? I can’t give you anything. I’ve got nothing _left_ to give. These—these _feelings_ that you think you have for me, you need to get rid of them. They won’t lead you anywhere.”

Of course, Erik should have known—there are no unspoken issues, no secret thoughts with a telepath. And here’s he’s been thinking he was so subtle. But then there’s the thing—Charles has known all along, and he’s stopped flinching all the same. It’s this, more than anything, that gives Erik the boldness to keep pushing when everything else in Charles is telling him to pull back. 

“Don’t you think that’s my decision to make?”

“I—I’m not giving you an order. I could just as well make you forget with half a thought, if I really wanted to. You have a tendency to repress; it would be simple enough to make you repress this as well and you’d be none the wiser.” 

“But I’d remember.”

“You’d think of it a silly confusion, a trick your mind played on you. We’d be friends and—you’d stop feeling like this all the time, like I’m not giving you enough.” 

Erik frowns, “I don’t feel that way.”

Charles gives him a tired look. “Yes, you do. And soon enough you’ll be frustrated and angry at me for it.”

“I didn’t know you could predict the future. Is that a secondary mutation? What’s your third one, being hysterical?”

Charles scowls, “Wanker.”

Erik grins. 

“Then _yield_ ,” he said intensely, leaning closer across the table. “Yield to me, Charles, I can help you. There’s nothing in your mind that can scare me off, you know that.”

Charles gave him a cool look, “You don’t have the vaguest idea of what is in my mind, Erik. It doesn’t work like yours.”

“So _show_ me.” 

“Did you know, the first time I met you, the very _first_ Image I got from your mind, was your mother dropping dead to the floor?” 

Erik freezes. 

Charles smiled, an awful, dead smile that has too many angles and too little warmth. 

“See, Erik? You’re just as always—you stomp and you scream and you think you can bend the world to your will. But as soon as someone starts biting back, ah—you _panic_.” 

But Erik grins.

“And you think you understand me so well, and that I know nothing about you. But I do know this, Charles—if you start hurting me, it’s because I touched a nerve. Am I getting too close, Charles? Does the fact that I won’t turn tail bother you so much?” 

Charles looks genuinely nonplussed, and his eyes fall to Erik’s hand where he’s still gripping his fingers, tight and firm and determined. 

“You’re really not leaving?” he asks.

Erik realizes they’ve stumbled into a decisive moment without even trying to. Or rather—he’s been trying to for a while now, only Charles’ been ignoring him and now that he’s no longer ignoring him at all, they’ve fallen right into the perfect spot with the ease of a well-oiled machine. 

Erik smiles softly, “I haven’t run so far, have I?”

He shifts his hand, moving his fingers and feeling satisfied when Charles doesn’t pull away his now free hand. He slips his long, long rough fingers through Charles’ pianist ones, feeling the caress of warm leather on the webs between them until they’re palm to palm, and then starts bending his fingers, tips closer to the back of Charles’ hands, closer, _closer_ —

Charles’ fingers clamp down almost painfully, and Erik’s look like the broken legs of a crushed spider. All he can touch now are the valleys between Charles’ knuckles, where he lays the pads of his fingers almost tenderly. 

“Who’s running away, now, Charles?” he asks softly. 

The telepath stares down at their hands for a long time, silent and still. Eventually, he seems to relax, as it warming to the idea that Erik’s here and he’s not going anywhere. God only knows what’s racing through the man’s fascinating mind—yet he appears to find some peace on the evolution of his thoughts. 

He releases Erik’s hand, and instead shifts his fingers up Erik’s wrist to the cuff of his shirt which he deftly undoes. To his forearm, where he lets them rest, heavy and warm through the leather. He’s not doing anything, so Erik knows he shouldn’t really count this as the unbelievable victory it feels like. 

But the fact remains Charles is touching him, willingly, for a prolonged period of time, and somehow— _somehow_ , in the public space of a café in Paris, sitting at opposite sides of a table and not even looking at each other—Charles’ hand beneath the fabric of his shirtsleeve, still protected by the leather of his gloves, feels unbearably intimate.


	8. Chapter 8

Their first excursion went so easily and smoothly that Erik rested comfortable in his confidence that he could handle whatever situations Charles’ madness threw at them. 

He should have known better. 

One of the principal problems he faced was Charles’ apparent inability to accept that Erik was not just along for the ride, and could in fact be an active participant. This became quickly evident when, on their second excursion, Erik realized that Charles was using his telepathy to hide him and make all the guards aim their guns at himself. 

When, upon returning to the hotel room, he’d confronted a bloody and bruised Charles, the telepath had seemed genuinely stunned. 

“Was I?”

“Did you not notice I wasn’t even shot at?” Erik had asked, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Oh, I—I suppose. Well… that’s just as well, in any case.”

Erik had felt the violent urge to slap him. 

“You’d better not,” Charles had said mildly. “You’ve not gotten hurt, but the night is not yet over.” 

Charles is far from perfect. Though naturally kind hearted, he is sometimes cruel, whether carelessly or on purpose no one can tell. Erik’s noticed Charles’ mean streak shows more openly when the telepath is alone with him, possibly because Charles is attempting to grow comfortable in the certainty that Erik will not leave. 

Erik doesn’t particularly mind. He’s cruel himself more often than not, most notably when it comes to Charles’ increasingly evident fear of allowing him close, and he feels no need or inclination to apologize for it. 

He finds himself thinking about that one morning that both he and Charles are forced to take a break from training—Charles because of a concussion, and Erik because of a sprained wrist. 

“Have you noticed I don’t apologize to you for anything, and you in turn apologize all the time?” he asks when Charles joins him by the lake near noon. 

“Do I?” Charles blinks. “I’m sorry for that, too.” 

“Cheeky little critter,” Erik grins fondly, blowing smoke through his nostrils. “What’s amusing is that you don’t even mean it half the time, have you noticed?”

“Oh, I know _that_. Let’s walk, hm?” 

Erik nods amiably, relishing the chance to have Charles all to himself for the first time in days. Whenever Charles is injured, the children smother him with attention, leaving him scarcely a moment unattended. Erik’s been forced to gracefully submit to rather similar attention from Ororo, who’s not only recruited several children of her age to keep an eye on him, but also cunningly maneuvered him into taking over the German classes as a teacher. 

“That should stop your whining,” she’d muttered as she dropped the textbook heavily on his desk. 

To this Charles had replied with delight and a stubborn insistence to pay him for the job. Erik, who knew how to pick his battles, had helplessly folded to his will. 

“I heard a little of the ethics class this morning,” Erik said idly as they walked, side by side, shoulders brushing companionably. “About genetic and social accidents. Is it true, then, than violence is written in the genetic code?” 

“Somewhat,” Charles replied. “It’s rather a tendency towards violence, an inclination, I suppose. It is true that children of violent families, even when removed at birth from the bosom of the abusive parents, may commonly display such tendencies.” 

“What then would you consider a _social_ accident?”

“Religion, understood as a conglomerate of beliefs. It is a social structure, taught to a child by the child’s social circle.” 

“How would you understand religion other than as a conglomerate of beliefs?” Erik arched a brow. 

“Faith and religion don’t always go hand in hand,” Charles pointed out. “You can teach a child to pray, but what’s to say he will believe in the existence of God once he reaches the age of doubt? Faith is a personal, intimate thing that cannot be taught.” 

“And it can so easily be destroyed,” Erik mused, dropping his cigarette to the mud at the edge of the lake to crush it beneath his heel. 

“Faith is not destroyed,” Charles says quietly, continuing to walk behind Erik. “It is lost. And as it is lost it may also once again be found, may it not?”

Erik goes still, hands in his pockets, staring out across the lake to where a small, dark-furred doe is staring at them curiously, not yet wearily. 

“Charles,” he asks gently, turning his head to look at the telepath, standing at his other side now, also seemingly looking at the doe. “You’re going to have to tell me what you need from me. _I’m_ not a telepath.” 

Charles looks at him out of the corner of his eye for barely a second before his eyes cut down, almost of their own volition. For a moment Erik is confused, but then the fingers in Charles’ closest hand twitch, and Erik realizes what Charles needs. He turns his own hand around, offering his palm, long fingers spread. 

The trick with Charles is not only figuring out what he needs, a task often made difficult by the fact that Charles himself doesn’t always know, but also to learn to provide it in a way that the telepath knows he’s free to take or reject. So many choices have been stripped away from him already, it’s important he make his own way towards what he wants. 

Charles hesitates, but very slowly he slides his own hand into Erik’s bigger one, still maneuvering carefully so as to studiously avoid the accidental brushing of skins. 

“Holy palmer’s kiss,” he murmurs, blue eyes fixed on Erik’s fingers. 

“Not with your gloves on,” Erik says breathlessly, moving a step closer to Charles so their shoulders are touching. 

Charles closes his eyes when Erik turns to face him, his free hand landing warm, fingers spread, on Charles’ ribs. The telepath shivers, seems to sway slightly. Erik slides his hand around to the small of Charles’ back, boldly bring him in so they’re flush against one another. The telepath reacts to that, hands going to Erik’s chest as he starts to push the other man away, but Erik dips his head so his forehead rests on the crown of Charles’ bent one, humming softly. 

He’d never thought he’d find within himself the ability to be tender, that he’d have such patience with someone like Charles that withdraws two steps for every one given forward. 

“Erik, please, I don’t want to hurt you,” Charles mumbles, fisting his hands on Erik’s sweater, moving to retreat but tightening his grip, uncertain. 

“You will anyway,” Erik says honestly, bringing his hands up Charles’ back to his shoulders and up to cradle the shorter man’s head. “Might as well get it over with.” 

He tugs Charles face up to his own, and when the telepath grows incredibly still, blue eyes wide, red lips parted, he bends closer and closes his eyes, breathing on Charles’ lips, sharing the same air—

He wakes up abruptly, lying in the grass by the lake, and Ororo jumps back, startled. 

“ _What the fuck?_ ” Erik asks with viciousness, fury rising quickly. 

“He didn’t do it on purpose, I don’t think,” Ororo offers in a small voice. “He did feel terrible about it.” 

“Where is he?” Erik leaps to his feet, muscles tense, ready for a fight. Ororo stands slowly, as if she fears a brusque movement will unleash the ferocity of Erik’s anger on herself. Erik gives her a glance, but he can’t swear he wouldn’t hurt her when he’s in this mood, by words at least, so he says nothing. 

“Hank needed to go into town to buy some things,” she says quietly. “The Professor drove him in his Logan’s truck.” 

Erik is momentarily speechless. 

“That goddamned _coward!_ ” he roars finally stalking past Ororo without a single backwards glance, in the direction of the manor. Ororo struggles to catch up with him, looking weary and concerned. 

“Um, I feel like someone should ask you not to do anything stupid—“

“You don’t know what happened,” Erik growls, and then whirls on her so abruptly the girl stumbled to a sudden stop, inches from colliding into him. “ _Do you?_ ” he demands.

“No,” she answers quickly, raising her hands. “He didn’t tell me, but he—Erik!”

The German’s already stalked away, much faster in his longer legs, and by the time Ororo catches up with him again he’s throwing the great double doors open with his gift, ignoring the way they slam loudly into the walls. The students, who are not stupid, slither quickly away from his path like the Red Sea parting for Moses. 

He finds Moira in the classroom where she teaches American History, kin the company of Rogue and a young Scott Summers. They take one look at him and flee the premises. 

“This is where we stand right now,” Erik starts, slamming the door with his mind scarcely a second after Ororo has slipped inside. “Either I force him, or Charles goes completely, raving man.” 

Moira looks torn between panic and confusion, so Erik pushes on. 

“He needs an anchor or he’ll lose his mind. Raven told me how to do it, and I know I can.” 

The woman looks down at the desk, blinks, seems to think for a long tense moment, and finally looks up, frowning. 

“What do you need from me?” 

Erik’s anger fades a little in the face of her cooperation. He’d thought he’d have to fight her for it, fight her, most importantly, for Charles, who he knows she wants. She doesn’t, _can’t_ , want him as badly as Erik does, and she most certainly will never understand him as Erik does—but she wants him all the same. 

Perhaps want is no longer even the correct word. Erik turns away from that thought. 

“I need this house, empty, for at least a couple of days. I need to be alone with him somewhere he feels safe.”

“What are you going to do?” Moira asks, growing worried. 

“That is none of your concern,” Erik returns, beginning, slowly, to find the calm within himself. He pauses. “You know it’ll never come to anything, don’t you? Between you and him.” 

The woman stares at him for a long time, seemingly at a loss for words. Finally she sighs, manages a shaky smile. 

“I didn’t until you came around.” 

Erik says nothing. 

“We could go camping,” Ororo says faintly, desperately trying to diffuse the mounting tension between the two of them. It’s clear Ororo knows better than to allow herself to be caught in the storm of Erik’s anger, and is kind enough to hope to avoid Moira makes such stupid mistake. 

“Camping… sounds fine,” Moira says doubtfully. 

Erik leaves them alone, to work out together how the camping trip will happen. He goes to his bedroom, takes a long shower and attempts to calm down. Failing that, he prowls his bedroom, flexing his fingers and struggling to reign in the urge to storm into Charles’ study and destroy everything. It’s a petty, childish thing to do, and besides he spent days putting some order to those books, he’s not going to go and destroy them now.

Several hours have gone silently past when Ororo knocks on his bedroom door and lets herself in, to find him standing straight and tense at the window. 

“You didn’t come down for dinner,” she says. “You can’t keep forgetting to eat.”

“I didn’t forget. I’m not hungry.” 

Ororo closes the door silently behind her and creeps closer across the room, eyes swinging carefully around the neatly ordered space, almost Spartan despite the luxuries it came with. She pauses, and then her eyes pin him into place, black and wise. 

“Children that are starved from a young age often grow to be lean, short adults. But you grew tall and broad-shouldered, so you must not have been starving by the beginning of your adolescence. Still, you should know better than to listen to what your body tells you. You might not feel hungry, but you need the food.” 

Erik’s throat has gone dry. 

“24006,” Ororo says quietly, eyes fixed on his. Erik glances down stupidly, to his left forearm covered by the sleeve of his sweater. He keeps it always hidden around the children, but perhaps it’s been a while since he’s made an effort to hide from Ororo. “There’s no one starving now, Erik,” Ororo continues, coming carefully closer as Erik stares at her, helpless and unmoving. “You wouldn’t be taking anyone’s food by eating despite your lack of hunger. I know what it’s like to give it away to save someone else. But this isn’t then, or there. This is now and here.”

“Who _are_ you?” Erik rasps. 

Ororo smiles, “I’m from Africa, Erik. We’re no strangers to starvation or segregation.” 

Erik lets her lead him down to the kitchen, watch him eat mechanically a plate of cooked vegetables that she cooks for him. Just as he is about to enter his room he stops, reaches over and catches her arm. 

“You know how to stop Charles from dragging you down with him when he falls asleep, don’t you?” 

Ororo blinks, “Technically, but I’ve never done it. Why?”

“Teach me.” 

Ororo spends a better night of the evening at it. When Charles falls asleep and the household falls asleep alongside him, Erik lets Ororo curl up in his bed under the covers and he remains sitting, alert and lucid, at the window. He doesn’t allow himself to fall asleep until well into the night, when the girl groggily rises to move to her own bed and, before leaving, she throws a long blanket over him and absently pats his head on her way out. 

Charles avoids Erik for two whole days, but finally seems to drift helplessly to his bedroom, wandering over to Erik’s desk where various different German exercises are spread, some half-finished, some in the process of being corrected. 

Erik watches him evenly from the bed, where he’s sitting with a novel. He thinks perhaps Charles will stall, uncomfortable and shy, but the telepath turns to face him entirely and says, “I’m sorry.” 

Erik snaps the book closed, “You ought to be. You ought to be ashamed, as well, but I’m beginning to think perhaps that emotion is beyond you.” 

Charles sighs, “As you say. I panicked, and I hurt you. I shouldn’t have.” 

“We agree on that at least.” 

“Erik, I’m trying to—“

“ _Lies_ ,” Erik snarles, rising from the bed with the grace of an angry lion. “You’re not trying _at all_.”

“I’m—Erik, I don’t know how to…” he trails off, looking anguished. “I don’t know what to do with you.” 

The German stares at him, wordless. 

Charles’ eyes flick away, restless, but he steels himself and he faces Erik again, seemingly ill-at-ease but determined to say what he needs to say. 

“I haven’t experienced any kind of sexual desire in over five years, Erik,” he says calmly, without any intonation that would imply an accompanying emotion. He is stating a cold, indifferent, detached fact. 

“I know how you think. You’re a sexual creature, my friend. I don’t think I can give you what you hope for.”

Erik runs a hand wearily through his hair. 

“That’s not… I do hope I can have that with you eventually, but Charles, surely you must see that’s not my only motivation.” 

“I don’t know what your motivations are at all,” Charles says, and for the first time since he has met him, Erik notices a flicker of fear in Charles’ blue eyes, in the way he pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth, a nervous gesture he’s never done before. It’s boyish and innocent, and Erik feels his stomach turn. He forgets sometimes that Charles is young and inexperienced when it comes to what’s between them—what _could_ be between them. 

“But you can read my _mind_ ,” he protests.

“And I can see what you want, see what you are doing—getting the children out of the house, I know you tried to hide it from me, but you must understand you can’t hide anything for me. Even if I were able to allow it, you must understand, I would not—I cannot trust you if you hide or lie to me—but then that’s not why I’m here right now. I can see what you plan, but not _why_ you feel you must do it.” 

Erik feels like pointing out that Charles is a large hypocrite, because he hdies and lies all the time, but instead he says, exasperated: “I’ve told you why, I want you to yield to me, to let me hold you!” 

“It can’t be that simple, surely you must want something else that I can—“

“Like _what?_ ” 

Charles falls silent, helpless. 

“Then why are you not stopping me?” Erik frowns. “It’s high time we stopped dancing around each other, Charles. You either want me to do this or you don’t. Stop acting like you’re just along for the ride, or putting up with my whims. I ask you again: why won’t you stop me?”

Charles closes his eyes, “I can’t.”

Erik scoffs. 

“Of course you can. You said so yourself, you could make me believe it was all just a—“

“I don’t want to,” Charles admits finally, finally, _finally_. He halts, swallows, pushes through. “I want—just as much as you do, I want to…” he stops short, and unbelievably, smiles. 

“I like that about you,” he says suddenly. “That you force me to talk. I never talk to anyone, did you know? Telepathy is quite a curse, sometimes. My head is a crowded, lonely place. A whirlwind of other people’s thoughts. Your mind is so quiet, though, so neatly organized. I like _that_ about you, too.” 

Erik feels like he might come undone at any moment. Charles, as it turns out, is fond of the spoken word, which he seems to find more _real_ , somehow, than drifting thoughts. So Erik talks more than he’s done in his entire life.

“What is it that you don’t like?” he asks dimly, unsure of what he’s saying but certain that he needs to keep Charles talking and in this very same subject.

“That’s the problem,” Charles sighs. “There’s nothing. I mean—I could do without you mocking my dear Cooper Mini or wincing whenever you remember my parents left me a fortune—but other than that, I suppose, I quite… It’s a strange thing, Erik. It’s as if the world is in black and grays and you’re amazingly, gloriously Technicolor. I do want you, yes.”

“So you won’t stop me,” Erik insists, because he needs to know where he stands, exactly. 

Charles grimaces. “So Raven’s told you what… you’d need to do, yes?” 

Erik nods. 

“That might stop you, very definitely. It can kill you, too. Drop you into a coma, or starving madness, or fracture your lovely mind in a thousand jagged shards—“

Erik wants to ask ‘you think my mind is lovely, do you?’ but instead he sighs, and says, “I find the alternative—letting you continue as you are—as unthinkable as you find that option. Why don’t we compromise, and you promise me you won’t ruin me?”

“Would that I could,” Charles says wretchedly. 

“We’ve reached an agreement, then,” Erik says diplomatically, folding his arms. “I want to do this, and you don’t want to stop me. It’ll happen. Moira is taking the children to the Yellowstone National Park on Friday and they’ll stay there a week. You have four days to try and prepare yourself not to destroy me, Charles.” 

“I still don’t understand what you gain with this,” Charles insists feebly. 

“Then you’re blind, deaf and stupid besides emotionally stunted. Now, Charles—I’m going to bed. You can either join me, or leave.” 

Charles gives him a long, searching look. Then he leaves. 

Erik doesn’t sleep. But he can tell that neither does Charles.


	9. Chapter 9

Early on Friday morning Erik comes down to the kitchen to hear the tail end of Sean’s complaint: “…come Magneto gets to stay?”

There’s a huff and then Scott’s voice says, “Can you imagine him in a _tent_? _I_ can’t.”

“Seriously? I think he can live out of bare _soil_ , that dude,” Alex comments. 

“Like, what, eat dirt? Yeah, I’m sure I can see him doing _that_. Him and his shiny leather shoes.” 

Charles has been gone for the last two days—not, as Erik initially suspected, as an attempt to avoid confrontation. 

“My world does not in fact revolve around you,” Charles had said, although they both knew that was a stupid lie. “I’m a lecturer, if you’ll remember.” 

He was supposed to return Friday in the afternoon. Raven had phoned, early Thursday morning, to speak briefly with Moira. Erik had happened to pick up the phone in Charles’ study, a liberty he took because when he was away at Oxford, Charles sometimes called when he began to feel anxious about one of the children. These occasional bouts of anxiety were so random Charles himself failed to understand them. Raven, however, had hinted to Erik that Charles was connected to one too many minds and occasionally lost grasp of himself. 

That he was going down a slippery slope towards insanity was left unsaid but hung thick between them. 

“How come you have the ability to just… kick everyone out of the school?” Raven has asked, amused. 

“I convinced Moira,” Erik answered. “Charles convinced the rest. He hasn’t told me, but I know telepathic control when I see it.” 

“Do you?” Raven had mused. 

Erik remembers that conversation wistfully as he stepped into the kitchen, cutting neatly across their conversation as he stalks to the coffee machine. Raven and he had spoken for a few more minutes, in which Erik had learned that Charles has a few double standards when it applies to him, and ones Erik is not at all fond of. 

“I do camp,” he said lightly. “I _can_ live off the soil. And I spent a better part of my childhood in displacement camps, so tents would not be strange. I’m not going because I don’t feel like it.” 

Logan, a gruff feline-looking man who appeared and disappeared from the mansion as whimsically as the sun in England, gave him a sharp look. 

“We won’t think any less of you if you just admit you’re staying for Chuck,” he says in a low tone. 

Erik levels a look at him, “Alright. I am.” 

There’s a moment of silence. 

Logan shrugs, “Just know that if he’s hurt no one will ever find your body.” 

The threat is both clear and honest. Erik doesn’t bother assuring he has no intentions of hurting anyone because that would be a lie. 

Unfortunately, none of the children on Xavier Hall are stupid. They know something is off—a suspicion that grows with every day, fueled not only by the seeming randomness of a previously unprecedented school-wide camping trip, but also by the unexplainable fact that only two of the teachers are staying behind, both of them notorious enough. Charles because he’s their Charles—and Erik because is half of the school isn’t scared of him, that’s just because they’re weary instead. 

Erik does not do well with children. The ones that are in his German classes seem to be gaining confidence in the belief that he won’t kill them in their sleep, but even they know that Erik is different from all their other tutors. Feelings about him seem to lean to the extremes opposites of either fascination or terror that borderlines religious. 

Ororo, contrary to any expectation, is no help. While open and easy-going with Charles and Erik, when in company of others she tends to fold into herself. Whatever the case, she’s been avoiding Erik for the last few days, seemingly ill-at-ease with his plans, perhaps resenting the fact that they put both him and Charles at risk. Erik hasn’t pressed. 

Erik watches from a window as the children prepare for the trip, throwing their things in a vaguely orderly manner into the storage compartments of the buses. He watches from the very same window as the buses—four in total, for one hundred and seventy-two students, and ten teachers—start down the gravel road towards the paved street, turn right, and depart. 

The house is eerily quiet in the wake of their departure. Erik has never known it to be this silent, since he arrived at the peak of its activity and has not been here long enough to see a holiday. On weekends most students stay in the premises, enjoying the many diversions and chances of entertainment the school itself is more than willing to provide—everything from pool tables to the chance to canoe or row on the lake. 

Restless, full of an energy fueled by a nervousness he’s not too proud to admit to, Erik roams the halls and prowls the library, picking up haphazard books only to leave them again a second later, too anxious to settle down and read. As the morning turns into noon and melts into afternoon, he changes into a tracksuit and takes a long run around the estate, pushing his muscles well beyond their comfort to exhaust himself. He finally stumbles to a halt, to breathe and rest, at the foot of the old abandoned satellite dish. 

Its metal hums and sings at him, calling out to his gift like light calls at a moth. Erik can feel every single little part of it, every screw and slab or flattened iron down to the smallest coils. 

Erik’s in perfect, absolute control of his gift. Has been ever since one of his first training sessions with Charles, when the telepath did something—dug somewhere—inside his mind where a wall had been standing, and effectively tore it down. Erik’s not sure what had been holding him back, although Charles has attempted to explain it many times. The Englishman is not always good with words, certainly doesn’t manage to always articulate, and Erik likes making him word his thoughts rather than simply transmitting them, mind to mind. 

Erik is in perfect control of his gift, and with this control came some measure of peace. Perhaps because this new layer of comprehension of himself stems from something new, something different than what was there before. He’s lived his life lead forward by hate and the need to extract revenge on those who wronged him, and for a long time that worked well enough—but it’s no longer sufficient. It hadn’t been sufficient, he knows, long before he met Charles Xavier, but Charles has a way of making things even more evident, bringing them up to the surface from the depths they lurked in previously. 

For all of his lack of formal education, Erik is an intelligent man. That which he lacks in knowledge he makes up for quickly with wit and intuition. Despite his ignorance in a wide array of otherwise interesting subjects he would gladly study, Erik does know how people’s minds work. Perhaps not as well as Charles, who dwells in them entirely too much, but he does comprehend them, as easily as he comprehends his own motivations. 

He knows, for example, what drives him to act in whichever way he acts. Erik is not capable of lying to himself, and short of that occasionally valuable ability, he is forced to confront all of his issues and doubts headlong as he goes. There are no places in the maze of his disciplined, bare mind where he might find desires he wishes to avoid facing. 

He also knows he tends to get obsessed. Not fixated, or stubborn, or fascinated, but something much darker and deeper, something dangerous that fractures through his mind like a spear of light through darkness. 

Erik understands how it all started. With Charles, certainly, only not because of Charles. The telepath was fascinating when they first met—strong and hard like diamond, unforgiving in the same ways Erik is. But it wasn’t until later, when they actually did know each other, that Erik started looking at him like something with potential for something much greater. Even then it wasn’t until he knew about what Shaw had done that he’d decided, swiftly and inevitably, that he wanted Charles for himself. 

Because he understands how Shaw thinks, and whatever Charles might think, Erik knows that Shaw doesn’t want the telepath _dead_. He wants him _back_. 

And Erik isn’t going to stand back and let Shaw have anything he wants, however little, however big. That’s how it started—an urge to deprive Shaw of what he wanted, to take away what Shaw hunted and keep it for himself. To take it and keep it forever like Shaw had done with Erik’s mother. And to think, Shaw had put such effort into shaping Charles precisely as he desired, to mold him into the kind of creature he could use in the most efficient ways. 

To be sure, where Erik was Shaw’s first work of art, Charles is his opera prima. 

Shaw killed Erik’s mother—why should Erik not possess Shaw’s greatest treasure?

He wonders if Charles knows that’s how it came to be. He supposes it’s inevitable he does. He must have seen that obsession morph slowly into something else, a slideshow of feelings and emotions twined with a determination hard like a cable of braided steel. 

At some point it did start morphing, and perhaps it had more to do with Erik’s fascination than it did with his obsession to get back at Shaw. Charles is undoubtedly charming when he means to, but there’s also an inherent good will about him, an urge to do good, to help, to protect, that is heartwarming. Erik’s never had anyone go out of his way to shelter him from anything, or to try and have him settle in a place where he is comfortable and feels he belongs. 

He knows he wasn’t placed in the bedroom next to Ororo’s out of simple convenience. Charles is as cunning as he is quick-witted, and rarely leaves things to luck and providence. 

They’ve both manipulated each other, there’s no denying it. Charles knew before he offered help that Erik was Shaw’s creature, and just as much as Erik wanted to vex his maker by taking possession of Charles, the telepath sought to anger Shaw by shielding Erik. Perhaps he hoped to draw him out of hiding and into a confrontation. 

Xavier Hall might have been a leisure house for a rich family in its time, but it has since turned into a fortified stronghold. It’s clear Charles has redesigned it to withstand an attack, and armed it with enough grown, composed mutants to protect it whilst offering a competent, efficient counterattack. It is the ultimate holdfast, defensible and able to endure harsh treatment. It is a fortress, inside which he locked the one thing Shaw wanted to destroy the most: Erik. 

Erik thinks of the night when he confronted Charles about the fact he wouldn’t let him come along for his excursions, wasn’t using him as bait, and smiles. What folly. Erik’s been bait all along. 

Only Shaw never did rise to it, for either of them. Charles has spent more time in the manor than he has in years, hoping that he would be present when Shaw decided to strike. When Shaw never did, he was instead forced to spend time with Erik, who was in turn seeking him out to accomplish his own objective. 

They fell into each other, somehow. 

It’s true that Erik is a sexual creature. That’s one of the first things ne noticed about Charles once he had decided he was going to make every effort to win him over. Charles is attractive, physically. He has the kind of body Erik likes in men. Slender and elegant, long-limbed, well-proportioned, fit. Shorter than him in a way that would allow him to easily assume the dominant role in bed, but tall enough to switch that if they ever cared to do so. 

Other things…. came later. When spending so much time in the company of another that one already finds captivating such feelings are inevitable. Erik didn’t bother to fight them, either, because he’s smart and old enough to know one can’t really fight those feelings. The more you fight them the more aware of them you are; the more, therefore, you feel them. 

It happened for Erik before it happened for Charles because Erik was looking, he was searching for loopholes and cracks where he could insert himself, bring himself up closer to Charles. He was paying attention. So it happened first for him, and Charles watched it happen in his mind like a film, but never really got to _understand_ it. 

But, truth be told, Erik was already so deep in by the time _he_ realized what mistake he’d done, that he didn’t even know how to back away from it. Nor did he seriously try. In for a penny, in for a pound. He’d already thrown his luck in with Charles and his school—what was the point of fighting it then? Every little touch he’d gleaned out of Charles was a victory in so many levels. 

Who knew at what point it had stopped being about Shaw and started being about Charles? 

_Well, Charles probably_ , he thinks ruefully, looking up to the satellite dish and feelings its hum in his blood. 

_Yes_ , comes the gentle voice, and Erik smiles. _I did try to stop you, my friend._

_We’re a couple of unbelievable assholes, aren’t we?_

_We suit each other well enough._

The patience Erik has had so far hasn’t all been born of affection and the need to have Charles by his side. A lot of it has been the absolute single-mindedness with which he pursues his obsessions, doggedly doing whatever it takes to achieve his goal. 

It must be all the more confusing for Charles. He understands obsession and hatred, but it’s a bit more difficult to understand when affection is born from that decay. He didn’t lie when he said he didn’t know what Erik was after at this point, what his motivations are anymore. 

_I don’t know when I started actually caring_ , Erik thinks, subdued. _But I don’t really care. I’d like it if you didn’t tell me._

Charles’ mind seems to sigh. 

_Nor do I, my dear. Care, that is. I know that at some point it became what it is now. That’s enough for me. Come along, then. We’ve set fire to our pyre—might as well leap into its flames._

Erik nods, starts the walk back to the manor.


	10. Chapter 10

Erik finds Charles in the study. He leans his shoulder against the doorframe and asks, “How do you want to do this?” 

Charles gives him a sideways look. 

“Are you going to ask me if I wrote a will?” Erik asks, amused. 

Charles snorts inelegantly. “You don’t own anything.” 

Erik shrugs. “Some clothes, a gun.”

“A coin,” Charles says, eyes flicking down to Erik’s right pocket. 

Erik levels him with a look. “One that goes to ground with its original owner.” 

Charles pulls a face. “I’m not a metal-bender. How am I supposed to kill someone with a silver coin?” 

“Not my problem. If you have to figure that out, I’ll be dead.”

“Precisely. You’ll be dead—you’ll never know whether I used the coin.” 

“I’ll know,” Erik replies, coming fully into the study. “So, what happens now?” 

Charles rubs his forehead tiredly. “I’m fatigued—it’s best we do it tonight, while I’m off center.” He sighs. “In any case, there would be no point in delaying it. Were you to make it through this miraculously unharmed, you will need some time to adapt.” 

“Your faith fills me with courage,” Erik says dryly. 

“I could make you think I believe it’ll be fine,” Charles quirks his mouth in an almost-smile. “But once we’re in the middle of it, you’ll know it was a lie.” 

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’d lie to me,” Erik says lightly, coming closer. 

Charles blinks. Then, “Oh. Raven. No, I suppose not.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t need to know, and I didn’t trust you then. I was testing the grounds, seeing how you reacted to things. I didn’t want to give you information you might learn to use against me.” 

“I can use anything against you,” Erik said quietly, stepping even closer, dangerously close to breaching Charles’ precious personal space. Charles stood his ground, and Erik knew he wasn’t going to back out this time. “How close you’ve let me get, Charles. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I might yet betray you?” 

“The only thing you want more than me right now is Shaw’s death,” the telepath replied calmly. “That works out for me, it turns out, as the only thing I want more than his death right now is you. We make a pair, and not an unlikely one.” 

Erik hums thoughtfully, reaches forward to tuck a stray lock of dark hair behind Charles’ hair, daring to brush his fingers over the delicate shell. Charles shivers but doesn’t flinch. Erik waits, but there’s no immediate pain. Perhaps the touch has been too innocent and brief. Perhaps Charles is too tired to retaliate, or has no intention of doing so.

“How should I do this?” Erik asks softly. 

Charles closes his eyes. “Take your shirt off. The more skin we touch, the better. I’ll sink right into you. It’ll be painful—for _both_ of us. I’ll probably struggle. You’re stronger than me physically, so you’ll have to wrestle me down. I don’t know if I’ll have a mind to restrain myself, so you’ll have to focus on your body, try to keep us together, while I try to…”

He trailed off, shaking his head. 

“While I try to keep us both sane, I suppose. It should be—your mind, Erik, is a very strict place. But _mine_ is fractured and compromised of jagged edges and broken shards. I’ll need to fit my mind around your angles and organize it according to your thought patterns, but I won’t be able to make it quickly enough that it’ll be a seamless transition for you. You’ll get lost in me first, and then I’ll try to revert the process. In the beginning, expect to blur into me, like we are the same person, two halves put back together.”

Erik reaches back and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, together with his t-shirt. Charles, more hesitant than him when it comes to nudity but thoroughly determined to do this, shrugs out of his sweater and gets to work on the buttons of his shirt. 

“You’ll want to take off the gloves,” Erik says lightly, eyes dancing over Charles’ lean form as the shirt parts open. There is no denying Charles is exquisite. 

Erik drags his eyes up with some effort only to find that Charles is _blushing_. 

“You heard that, then?” Erik asks, rueful. 

“ _Exquisite_ ,” Charles mumbles mockingly. 

“You don’t take well to compliments, hm?” 

“Not ones that imply I am feminine.” 

Erik laughs, and then stops short when Charles shrugs out of his shirt completely to reveal pale, square shoulders and a tones chest that tapers down to trim hips. This is the first time Erik has seen Charles’ bare chest without the impediment of a bandage, so it’s also the first time he sees the stark black letters of the tattoo. His throat goes dry. 

“Oh,” Charles stops. 

“You said he never hurt you,” Erik rasps. 

“I said he never hit me,” Charles corrects coolly. “And in any case, it didn’t hurt, because he did it while I was drugged and unconscious.”

It’s a seal, a neat black line encircling the initials S.S., and it’s been tattooed right in the center of Charles’ upper abdominal muscles, directly below the body of the ribs, under the tail of the Xiphoid process. Erik hates it with a sudden, burning passion that boils like acid in the pit of his stomach and creeps up his veins, clawing up his throat like warm bile. 

Charles calmly, methodically, unclasps and removes his leather gloves, as if using the action to ensure he avoids meeting Erik’s eyes. 

“It’s of no consequence,” he says faintly. “And you are the first person to ever set eyes on it anyway—besides Raven, that is, who actually saw it done. She told me little of the process.” 

Erik swallows convulsively. 

Charles consciously relaxes his shoulders, fingertips skimming absently over the ink of the seal, before he forces himself to relax his arms as well, loosening his muscles. 

“As I said, I will probably struggle, so—“

“Charles,” Erik interrupts, reaching out his right hand. “Stop stalling. I think we’re both ready.” 

Charles smiles crookedly. “I don’t. Let’s find out.” 

He collides with Erik’s larger frame with a violence that implies if he didn’t give himself the momentum, he would never have been able to do it. Erik’s has a fraction of a second to form a vice around his back with his arms and think about how smooth his skin is before everything tilts and smashes into a storm of mindless, soundless, incomprehensible _agony_. 

At first everything whites out. Maybe he screams. Distantly he can tell Charles is physically struggling, but he was right—Erik is much stronger, he’ll not be able to free himself unless he uses a cleverly thought technique, something that is currently well out of his reach. Maybe it’s Charles that screams. 

Yes—Charles definitely screams. He screams and then he whimpers. Or not—he’s not whimpering now. But he whimpers when Kurt Marko hits him the first time, a close fist across a child’s chubby cheek. He whimpers helplessly in terror as the German soldiers storm their house above the nook in the floor where they are hiding—no. Wait. 

Yes. He reaches his hands and the gates bend down, eager to please his demands. He’s thirteen and Shaw looks at him with his cool blue eyes and asks _The girl?_ And Kurt answers _I don’t know if she has any powers, but the boy, the boy’s the one you really want._ Shaw says _Yes_ and then he says _I will count to three, and you will move this coin._

His mother dies when he turns ten, in a drunken car accident, and she dies when he turns thirteen, in a dim room in a concentration camp. His father died when he was too young to remember him and was buried in the family crypt, and he died in a concentration camp and lies somewhere beneath the dirt in an unmarked, mass grave, but he knows where his mother is buried because he dug the grave himself. 

He can feel the pain of broken nails digging out dirt, and his mother on the ground beside him but she’s not—because he never saw her body, Kurt identified it at the morgue. 

He’s sixteen the first time Shaw takes him, and he makes him bleed. That night Raven curls around him in the bed and cries and cries and cries, but his eyes are dry as the desert, as dry as when he drug his mother’s grave, as dry as when he plunged a knife through the guard by the door and escaped, finally finally _finally_ free, out into the night never to be seen again until he was a man and he wanted revenge, until he was a man and had built a safe haven for children that needed him. 

He has a seal in his chest and keeps a coin in his pocket and everything inside him wants Shaw dead, with a startling ferocity like the enraged outburst of a dying star, with enough heat to consume the world. 

He turns seventeen and he is free. He turns eighteen and for his birthday Shaw drugs him and when he wakes his chest burns and Raven is rubbing soothing ointment into his reddened skin, dark ink beneath her fingers, and his eyes are dry as the desert. 

He’s nineteen and he’s killed the man that told the German soldiers that they were Jews. He’s nineteen and Azazel is Shaw’s newest fascination, a man grown, in perfect control of his powers. Azazel likes Raven, and he’s kind enough with both her and her brother. Azazel is afraid of him, in a way he is too intelligent to attempt to hide. 

He lives with Azazel for a year. He meets Azazel only once, when they run into each other hunting down a Nazi agent and the mutant escapes him before he can kill him. 

He goes to Argentina, to the picturesque little mountain-top town of San Martin de los Andes. He’s never been to South America below Brazil. 

He’s twenty years old and in Shaw’s bed, and he’s bleeding again. A puff of red smoke and Azazel grabs his wrist, a puff of red smoke and they’re in a hospital, a puff of red smoke and Azazel is gone, and he never sees him again. He doesn’t see Raven for a week, when she comes find him in the hospital and she says _I’m saying with him until you kill him, we need to keep a track of his movements._

He goes to the FBI and tells them what he is, what Shaw is and what he plans to do, doesn’t tell them what he’s done to him. He thinks Moira is nice enough she quickly falls for him but he ignores it. He doesn’t bother deleting the feeling because if she likes him, she’ll keep him safe. 

He finds Nazi gold, forged from the spoils stolen from his people, he tries to sell it to a banker, he gets his information and leaves. A year later he decides he’s not all that magnanimous, comes back and kills him in his bed. 

He goes to Oxford and he goes to Munich, simultaneously as the timelines begin to overlap. He’s studying genetics in Oxford and he’s on a plane en route to Russia. He’s in Venice enjoying the sun and he’s in the gardens outside Xavier Hall, watching a car go up in flames and hearing the screams of a man trapped inside, and his eyes are dry as the desert. His hand aches a little where Raven clutches at him. 

He’s in Argentina again, in Villa Gesell drinking beer and killing his tormentors and he’s in a seedy little student bar in Oxford getting drunk because he’s achieved his PhD in a record time of three years. He’s twenty even, he’s twenty three. 

He’s in Oxford, he’s in Oxford. He’s looking for a CIA agent, he knows there’s someone looking for him here in this bar and _oh_ —his mother, she was murdered—Shaw, Shaw again, always Shaw. 

He loses track, everything blurs and distorts, a kaleidoscope of images and sounds and smells he’s seen, heard and smelt and has never seen, never heard, never smelt. 

Things begin, slowly, to fall into place. A voice says yes—it’s been like this all along. But he says no, it’s like _this_ —the gates bend over, eager to do as he commands them. Shaw says, _I’ll count to three._ He digs his mother’s grave. He’s seventeen and he’s free. He’s nineteen and he’s killed the man that told the German soldiers that they were Jews. He’s been to San Martin de Los Andes and Villa Gesell. 

The rest is not his. 

His name is Erik. He is not Charles Xavier. 

Yes. That makes sense. 

He awakens, slowly, gradually, and begins once again to feel his body. He blinks blearily down, realizes he’s on the floor, sprawled half over another limp body. On shaky arms he pushes himself up, remembering. 

Charles is on his side, having somehow in the struggle managed to put his back to Erik’s chest. He’s limp as a dead man, and when Erik grabs his shoulder and turns him on his back his eyes are half-open but empty. Erik feels a tendril of horror and then is calm, feels reassured. _Oh._ Charles has momentarily shut down, but the damage is not permanent. He’s simply—regrouping, you could say. 

Erik glances down at his arms. He’s covered in scratches. The skin’s been broken in some places. He looks briefly down—yes, there’s some blood on Charles’ fingers. Erik leaves him on the floor and goes to the ensuite bathroom to wash his arms and hands, white at his face streaked with tears. Then he comes back, gathers Charles’ body into his arms and takes him to the bed. Charles’ eyes are open and vacant, lashes heavy. Erik brushes the tears in his cheeks tenderly away, but they keep coming, soaking into the cloth of the pillow. 

There is much skin to touch and explore, but all Erik wants to do is sleep. 

He nearly sleepwalks four floors down to his bedroom, collapses into the bed and knows no more.


	11. Chapter 11

He’s woken by the pain, a rippling, incandescent wave of it that tears a sob from his throat. It’s as if the bones in his skull have fractured and the pieces have rearranged in a strange order, fused together at the wrong angles. Like the swell of a wave the pain crests, falls, peaks again and disappears only to return stronger than ever. 

He’s left the curtains in his bedroom open but when he tries to get up to close them, the pain is crippling, and he collapses back in the bed with a gasp, incapable even of crying out. 

He thinks dimly _I should have known_ , but even thinking demands an effort much that is quite beyond him, and soon even that stops. He curls in bed and tries not to move, tries to breathe as gently as possible. 

He loses track of time completely. At some point it must be night because the light stops hurting his eyes. He attempts to rise and the dizziness brings bile to his mouth, so he flops back down and hopes the pain won’t strike again. It does. 

Time, probably, continues to roll past. Erik doesn’t notice it. 

Eventually the pain starts to abate, and he can breathe normally again, can open his eyes without crying out. Slowly, as it begins to fade, his body starts to relax. In the absence of the crippling pain in his skull he takes stoke of his limbs and becomes aware of how sore he is, how stiff he’s been as he tried to survive the headache. Everything hurts. His arms sting where Charles scratched him. There’s a large, darkening bruise over his ribs where he suspects Charles’ elbow might have connected, repeatedly. 

As his muscles relax so naturally do his organs, and Erik has to drag himself to the bathroom to be sick. He hasn’t eaten in days—he forgot to eat again on Friday and he has no idea how long he’s been in bed, how long since he and Charles were together in the study. There’s nothing to bring up, but he dry retches miserably, until his stomach gives up completely and he slides to the floor, shivering and covered in cold sweat, weak as a babe. 

That’s how Charles finds him, a minute or a day later. He slowly sits him up, helping him hold his head up, wipes a cool washcloth over his fevered face. He grabs Erik’s arm and puts it around his shoulders and then he’s carefully pulling him up, letting him lean heavily on him as he guides him to the bed. 

He wraps his hand around the back of Erik’s neck and holds him gently as he lowers him to the bed, murmuring soothingly. 

“What went wrong?” Erik manages to croak through his raw throat. 

“Nothing,” Charles says softly, pressing a cool cloth to Erik’s face. “You did brilliant, darling. This will pass. You’ll be well soon.” 

Erik allows himself to go limp, doesn’t even turns his face towards Charles when he replaces the cloth, grown warm against his heated skin. Charles is wiping another one down his long neck, and it feels absolutely marvelous. Erik forces himself to open his eyes for a brief moment, catches a glimpse of bare skin. 

“Your gloves,” he rasps. 

“I don’t need them anymore,” Charles sooths, carding tender fingers through Erik’s sweat-damp hair. “Not with you. Try to get some rest.”

Erik tries to protest, but his throat isn’t making any more sounds, and Charles’ mind is nudging him gently. He sleeps. 

He wakes again God knows how much time later, with Charles’ hand on his shoulder and a glass of cold water at his lips. He sips, bringing up a shaky hand to wrap over Charles bare fingers. Charles insists he drains the glass, so he does, and then drops his head back to the pillow. 

“What time is it?” he asks roughly. His throat still stings, but it’s much better. 

“Ten AM,” Charles answers. “Of Monday.” 

Erik throws an arm over his face. “I slept the entire fucking weekend away. And you let me.” 

“You slept through Sunday,” Charles corrects. “You had a massive migraine from Friday night to Saturday noon, I believe, and then the migraine receded and the consequences settled in. I found you late Saturday afternoon as soon as I woke up. You were lying on the bathroom floor, do you remember?”

“Vaguely,” Erik answers wearily. 

He removes his arm to take his first good look at Charles. The telepath is wearing lose jeans and a white shirt, and his hair has been allowed to dry in disorder, curling wildly around his head. A lock has fallen over his forehead, above his right eye. His arms and hands are bare. His left hand is resting on Erik’s left shoulder, light and comfortable. 

Erik becomes aware of the fact he is supremely uncomfortable. He smells of dried sweat and he can still taste vomit and bile in his mouth. The sheets feel damp beneath the skin of his back. He feels clammy and sticky. 

“I’m disgusting,” he mutters, sitting up with some care. Charles backs off a little to give him some room. 

“A shower would be good, but I’d like to get some food in your first,” he says. “I’ve not been able to get you to eat anything. I was hoping to be able to keep you awake more than a couple of minutes this time.”

He reaches over to the nightstand and comes back with a steaming mug in his hands. Erik takes it reflexively, sniffing at it suspiciously, to Charles’ amusement. 

“Milk and honey,” Charles explains. “I know you don’t like sweet things, but I didn’t want to risk anything solid on your sore stomach and I want you to have some sugar in your system if you’re going to get up.” 

Erik winces, but he bravely swallows the unbearably sweet concoction and pushes the mug in Charles hand. 

“I want to shower,” he says as he pushes back the sheets Charles had thrown over him. He gives the telepath a level, piercing look. “Then we talk.” 

Charles shrugs and gives Erik a slight smile, “I’m not going anywhere, Erik. We’re more than brothers now. We’re more, even, than lovers. We’re… something else entirely.” 

The German stares at him. He reaches out and, carefully, brushes the pad of his thumb over the swell of Charles’ cheekbone. Charles’ eyes fall closed. Delighted that he hasn’t been rejected, that Charles hasn’t even flinched, Erik bring the whole of his palm against the man’s cheek, feeling the smooth skin. He slides it down to his neck, thrilled when Charles lets his head drop back to allow more access. He feels the movement of the muscles underneath the skin as Charles swallows. Erik shifts his thumb so he frames Charles’ throat, his Adam’s apple right above the web of flesh between thumb and index. 

He has to swallow against the impulse of drawing Charles in, sinking his nose in his neck and licking his skin, all that smooth pale skin he is now completely free to claim. 

Reluctantly, he releases the telepath and gets out of bed. Charles looks shaken and slightly dazed—and no wonder, no one but his sister has laid a hand on him in years. 

Charles sighs, “I’ll prepare something for us to eat. You might want to shave, too. You look like a caveman.” 

Erik grumbles a German curse and slams close the bathroom door. 

The hot water on his skin is absolutely amazing. He indulges, taking more time to shower than he usually does, rubbing is scalp in soothing circles. Having been in such amounts of pain, the lack of it is truly liberating. One never knows how wretched being ill is, until one’s just stumbled one’s way out of a bout of something truly horrid. 

He shaves, brushes his teeth and dresses in slacks and a polo shirt. By the time he makes his way to the kitchen Charles is slicing tomatoes at the counter, the movements of the blade swift and sure. 

Erik has seen Charles cook before. He is skilled enough, evidently comfortable with the movements of the blade, but he has never before displayed such level of dexterity. He now moves the metal as if it were attached to the nerve-endings and the tips of his fingers. As it is, indeed, attached to Erik’s. 

Erik takes a moment to look him over. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s learned to spot the differences, but it seems to him that Charles is more relaxed and yet stands straighter, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders and is no longer crushing his spinal column. 

His skin is nearly luminous, is so pale it’s almost translucent. 

“All those years of long sleeves seem to have done wonders for your English complexion,” he teases as reaches around Charles to snag a piece of tomato and pop it in his mouth. “I can see the veins beneath your skin.”

Charles rolls his eyes, reaches for the lettuce and shoves it at Erik’s hands. 

“Make yourself useful, yes? There’s a lad.” 

Erik drops the lettuce in the sink without a single glance, and reaches instead for Charles, settling his hands comfortably in the man’s hips and turning him to face him. Charles goes easily along, putting down the knife and picking up a cloth to wipe his hands. When he drops the cloth, he seems unsure as to what to do with his now free hands. 

He rests them on Erik’s forearms, light and warm, unbearably soft.

“Something else entirely, hm?” Erik asks thoughtfully, allowing his lips to curve in a fond smile. “So what are we?” 

“One,” Charles says simply. 

Erik hesitates momentarily, straightens so he’s towering over Charles and is able to look wearily down at him. 

“Some of the things I saw, Charles—we’re going to have to talk about them.” 

Charles winces, looking away uncomfortably. 

“That’s what he does,” Erik says quietly, but doesn’t move to stop Charles as the man pulls away from him, swallowing and looking out the window. “He twists you against yourself and then—“

“Yes,” Charles interrupts sharply. “I am quite aware how Shaw does his magic, thank you.” 

Erik pauses. 

“You can’t hide from me now, Charles. I know everything about you. You know that, so why are you dodging me?” 

Charles grips the edge of the countertop so tightly his knuckles go white. He grits his teeth, the muscles on his jaw tense. He cuts his eyes at Erik as he narrows them, brows pulling together—oh. This is the first time, but it won’t be the last. That gesture is Erik’s, an always-there mannerism he picked up from—

“My father used to do that,” he says faintly. 

Charles blinks. “Our—oh. Yes. _Your_ father. Mathias Lehnsherr. Right. You’re right, he did. You got it from him and… as did I. He raised me, too, now.”

There’s a long moment of silence. 

“But you had your own father,” Erik says carefully, because Charles looks beautiful in the sunlight and his eyes are clear and vivid blue, but his mind feels broken. He can feel it, like a link, like a chain, a chord attached to his own mind, much more stable, firmer. 

“I hardly remember him,” Charles explained. “Your father was such an impressive presence in your mind, he superseded all of my own memories of my own father. Mathias is much stronger in my memories than Francis.” 

“Those are not your memories, surely you must see that,” Erik is weary, growing quickly concerned. Charles looks fine but he sounds unhinged. Something must have gone wrong. 

_No, dearest,_ Charles reaches slowly over and grabs Erik’s hand. _Your mind is my mind, now._

Erik watches, as the knife that lays forgotten on the table, wet with tomato juice, rights itself to its edge, then up to its tip, and hovers quietly and perfectly balanced on the air, above the countertops, spinning idle and slow. 

Erik can feel it. He can feel it and he understands what is doing, how it’s doing it, can feel it doing it because it’s something he can do—only it isn’t _him_ that is doing it. 

“How?” he whispers. 

_This is why you need time to adjust,_ Charles says gently, raises his hand and allows the knife to settle peacefully into his palm. _We’re one, Erik—I’m a metal-bender and you, my dear, are a telepath._

Erik sways dizzily. Just as he is thinking he must sit Charles is pushing him down into a chair, grabbing the back of his neck and pushing it down so he bends over. He hyperventilates. Charles fetches him a glass of water and insists he drinks it. He manages one swallow before his throat closes and he chokes. 

“I can’t—Charles, I can’t possibly handle other people’s minds,” he says desperately, clutching the geneticist’s arm urgently. “I can hardly manage my own—“ 

“You’re handling mine remarkably well,” Charles soothes, kneeling down at his side and laying his hands atop Erik’s right thigh. “But be calm. My gift isn’t like yours, and your mind isn’t architectured like mine. While I might someday be able to command metal at the same level you can, you will never be able to accommodate wide long-range telepathy. Your telepathy will most likely manifest in touch-telepathy, perhaps quiet deep, but only through contact. We’ll learn to control that.” 

Erik swallows with some difficulty, “But if you’ll be able to command metal, why…?”

“Telepathy manifests at a young age for a reason,” Charles explains. “It must necessarily begin functioning at a time when the individual’s mind is still forming, is flexible and pliable and adaptable. A grown man’s mind is s rigid place by nature, even those of the free, open minded people, and can only very rarely learn to accommodate the minds of others.” 

“Yet you said I’m handling yours.” 

“It’s a feedback loop, Erik,” Charles is earnest and calm, patient. “Your mind is very militarized, very strict, disciplined and rigid. My mind is the exact opposite. I am using your mind to anchor myself, creating the architecture of my thought patterns based on the groundworks of yours. You are a remarkably resilient creature—but your mind is not prepared to make room for another one’s. That ability comes from my mind—something _you_ are picking up from _me_. Your mind will stretch enough to fit us both, but not an inch further without training, so I cannot unleash my gift upon you because it would kill you.” 

“But you can unleash my gift on yourself,” Erik bends his head to rub at his temples, and realizes a second after doing it that he’s never done it before. Charles does, though, and often enough that he recognizes the gesture as the sign of a coming headache. 

Charles laughs quietly and pulls his right hand down to rest against Erik’s knee, squeezing comfortingly. 

“Your gift is a physical one. I’m not saying it’s weaker or easier than mine, only that it’s different. Nor is it the first time I have controlled someone else’ gift—thought those times I was not as close to that person as we are now.” 

Erik gets a sudden idea, head snapping up to stare at Charles. 

“Can you shape-shift?”

Charles smiles, “No. What I share with Raven and what I share with you are different things. One of a kind, both, impossible to compare.” 

Erik struggles to bend his head around the whole subject. 

“But won’t it all make you think like _me?_ ”

“Well, at the beginning perhaps, but mostly I am using you as a comparison chart. Surprisingly, you do know the difference between right and wrong and when something is too far, too insane, too twisted. Most of the time you discard it and do what you think you need to do, but you do know the _difference_. I can work my way up from that.” 

Erik looks at him incredulously. 

“We’re well and truly fucked.” 

Charles laughs so hard he has to press his forehead to Erik’s thigh, frank, open peals of clear laughter flooding the kitchen like the golden sunlight. Certainly equally warming. Erik smiles despite himself and wraps his hand around the back of Charles’ neck, rubbing softly, loving the easy companionship that’s bloomed between them. 

It was easy, then, to tangle his fingers in the finger at the back of Charles’ head and tug up as he bends down and—

Charles’ lips are soft and sweet, full against his own thin ones. Erik knows his own mouth is not his most attractive trait, but Charles has the mouth of a woman, gracefully shaped, dark red and full. Erik has wanted to kiss him for a long time, so he takes his time, unhurriedly brushing his lips over the other man’s, tugging one and then the other one between his own, simply enjoying the softness and the taste. 

Charles’ hand has tightened on Erik’s knee, almost reflexively. Erik feels an arrow of arousal that he quickly curbs, when he feels Charles hesitate minutely. They’ve kept the kiss chaste enough, so Erik’s still perfectly decent when he finally decides to pull back, pressing one last, lingering kiss to Charles’ bottom lip. 

He cards his fingers through Charles’ rich dark hair. Pressing down on the scalp and getting a pleased hum in response. 

“That’s nice,” Charles says softly. He squeezes Erik’s knee gently once, and opens his eyes, and Erik can tell he’s going to say one of those things he sometimes says—giving out truths drop by drop, even if Erik’s already bore witness to the vast ocean of his pain. 

“You’re the first person I’ve truly ever wanted to have for a lover.” 

“Hm,” Erik smiles. “But you’re scared.” 

He doesn’t know where the words come from, but he knows it’s the truth. So does Charles. 

Charles sighs. “I’ve never had heterosexual sex, you know. I’ve only ever been with one man—and he liked to make it hurt.” 

“We’ll take it slow,” Erik shrugs. “There’s no rush. The enemy of fear is familiarity, and familiarity can only be achieved through exploration. We’ve time, anyway, don’t we?”

Charles seems suddenly uneasy, pulling away so that Erik’s hand leaves his hair. 

“A lot of time,” he says, wearily looking up at the other man. Erik sees where this is going and surges forward and down, gripping Charles’ hair again and crushing their lips together with such startling fierceness that Charles literally _squeals_ , an undignified sound he’s never done before and that amuses Erik to no end. 

He pulls back and gives Charles one of his grins full of teeth and compromised of too many sharp angles. It reads more like a threat than anything else, and Charles grows still. 

“I hope you weren’t about to imply you won’t expect me to be exclusive,” he says silkily, tightening his grip on Charles’ hair possessively. “Because I might understand that to mean you wouldn’t _mind_ me not being exclusive. And I do hope you’ll mind—because _I_ will mind very much, indeed, _very much so_ , if you’re not.” 

“There’s no one out there for me but you,” Charles replies, his open frankness nearly undoing Erik. It seems to the German that Charles has adapted to the honest nature of their new bond much more quickly than Erik, and is not struggling with its implications or meaning the way Erik himself is. Perhaps because, just as Charles has said, his mind is better prepared to embrace such a link. 

Erik wants to say, ‘I wouldn’t let you have anyone else’ and ‘I don’t need anyone else either’, but instead he sighs and says, “It’ll get better. We’ll work it out.” 

Charles shifts, grabs Erik’s hand and tangles their fingers together, all the while looking, fascinated, as their skins touch. Charles’ hands are long-fingered and fine-boned, the hands of a piano player, elegant and graceful and lilywhite pale. Erik’s are broad and wide, larger, tanned from being in the sun and calloused from the grip of throwing knives and pistols, his fingers long and square-tipped. 

The telepath looks at them, awed. Erik smiles, then grins when Charles shyly bring their hands up to his mouth and kisses the back of Erik’s, nearly a brush of lips, chaste and innocent and heart-warming. 

“Yes,” Charles says, contemplative. “I suppose we will.”


	12. Chapter 12

Of all the things Erik imagined might pose a problem when in a relationship with Charles Xavier, funnily enough, he didn’t consider the first to arise would be sleeping arrangements. 

It’s obvious Charles hasn’t shared a bed with a partner in many years—even then perhaps was never afforded freedom and comfort in such a thing. Erik’s also keenly aware of the fact Charles is desperately touch-starved, craves warmth and contact and the presence of another body near his. 

All of these seemingly independent tangents converge, then, in Erik’s bed early Tuesday morning.

Erik is somewhat gratified Charles had no issue with admitting he wanted to sleep with Erik. He had a bit of a problem with the fact he did mean only _sleeping_ , whereas Erik could have used the opportunity to gladly do something else, but no one can claim to be surprised on either account. Eager as he is—and he _is_ eager—Charles finds comfort in the implied ability to turn down the invitation. Erik had offered, and Charles had declined. That in itself was fine. That Charles hadn’t freaked out about it tasted well to Erik, anyway. 

The problem now is that Erik is a sexual creature, has been for a long time. He is a young healthy man and waking up in the mornings hard is hardly surprising. This all could be easily solved by a simple trip to the restroom; Erik rarely takes his time in the mornings, an indulgence he believes is borderline negligence when he has other things he can divert his attention to. 

So all he has to do is get up and go to the restroom. 

If only he could manage to untangle his limbs from Charles’. 

“Goddamn octopus,” he mutters, dropping his head back to the pillow with a huff. Charles doesn’t even stir, face pressed against Erik’s neck, arms wrapped around his waist, one leg thrown over his. Erik stabs him in the kidneys with a finger, forgoing gentleness—because there are limits to everything, even what he will do for Charles, and Erik doesn’t _cuddle_ —and thinks harshly _Rise and shine, you bloody anaconda._

Charles’ mind shifts, like a gentle tug at the back of Erik’s consciousness, and something that feels like lucidity begins to blossom, slow and lazy, until Charles’ mind lights up fully and his eyes open. 

He blinks. “Hm?” 

“Either you let me get up,” Erik says, strained. “Or you do something about this.” 

Charles blinks again, shifts to sit up a bit. The movement jostles them a little. The inside of Charles’ thigh brings friction against Erik’s groin, making him tense. The penny is in the air—the penny drops. 

“Oh,” Charles sits up completely, withdrawing so that Erik can move. “Oh, I am terribly sorry—I should have known I would be a rather handsy bed partner, I apologize, Erik.”

“That’s fine,” Erik grumbles, throwing off the covers with a flick of his wrist. “Just try not to smother me while I sleep, next time. I have nightmares too, you know, and you won’t want to be caught in the reach of one of my elbows.” 

“Those _are_ lethally sharp,” Charles grins. “You’re a tad on the gangly side, hm?” 

“As opposed to you, who is buff and tall and the epitome of masculinity,” Erik retorts, “Especially those _lips_ of yours.” 

“You have a problem with my lips?” Charles arches a brow, pushing his hair back out of his face with a careless, graceful gesture that Erik can’t help but appreciate. 

“They look like they should be wrapped around something,” Erik bites out, because it’s morning and it’s Charles, so he can be an asshole unimpeded. “Speaking of which, I’m not the only one with a problem.” 

Charles’ eyes flick down, and Erik has a spare second to see his perfectly genuine bewilderment to find that he’s aroused, as well, before he ducks into the restroom and takes care of his own situation. 

By the time he comes out, Charles has abandoned ship. 

_You cowardly little fool_ , Erik thinks, not without fondness, as he towels his hair dry savagely. 

_I didn’t run away_ , Charles protests. _I waited until I calmed down and then came to take a shower. What else would you have me do?_

_What everybody else does, take care of it,_ Erik rolls his eyes. _Anyway, why are you even showering? I want to train._

Charles feels slightly embarrassed to not have thought of it, which is news for Erik. Charles hasn’t shared any kind of embarrassment before, certainly. Erik was beginning to think the whole feeling has been trained out of him. 

When they meet at the door to the danger room, Charles’ hair is still wet. Erik tangles his fingers in it briefly, pulls Charles in for a quick, deep kiss. He’s aware he’s developing a fixation with Charles’ hair, soft and rich and dark, and he doesn’t care to do anything about it. 

Charles normally crops it all out in the beginning of the summer, unwilling to suffer the heat of Westchester county with a head full of thick dark hair. But he won’t, this year, he knows—because Erik likes it, and Erik’s abstained from shaving this morning because Charles likes the prickly, ginger scruff. 

Small things. Enough, for now. 

They train, and it’s a mess. All of their reflexes are off. Erik jerks at things he’s never even flinched at, and Charles’ mind is sluggish and slow to react, dragged down by Erik’s. Erik’s mind is quick as a snake, but it does work differently than Charles’, and the difference is jarring. Charles is much less violent and aggressive than Erik, dodging things that Erik would normally simply destroy. The split-second indecision between the impulse to dodge and the urge to crush slow him down nearly to a crawl. Erik himself is faring quite better, swiftly understanding how to dial Charles’ mind down to a faraway murmur as he focuses on the circuit. Erik is, after all, extraordinarily single-minded. 

By the end of the session they’ve not only wasted away the entire morning and part of the afternoon, but they are both full of darkening bruises and clusters of scrapes and cuts. 

They share a long look. 

“Again,” Erik says grimly. 

It goes only marginally better. They stop only because the danger room inlaid alert system, monitoring their life-signs, shuts down the weaponry and withdraws the equipment. 

“That’s a first,” Charles gasps, winded, as he doubles over to lean his hands on his knees. “I had it programmed in as an anecdotic precaution.”

He grins, eyes alight, says, “I’m my own worst case scenario. How brilliant,” and then he fists a hand on Erik’s damp sweatshirt, bring him in and bites his bottom lip. Erik goes all too willingly, sinking into the kiss with a gratefulness not even he expected. Willing for now to be lead, he easily opens his mouth when Charles seeks to deepen the kiss, and isn’t aware he’s being pushed back until his back touches the wall. 

Erik wraps his hands around the curve of Charles’ trim hips and crushes him against his own, not surprised to find Charles is hard. Charles, on the other hand, is both surprised and embarrassed. It’s all too easy for Erik to keep him from pulling back, but Charles’ mood has shifted none the less, cheeks flushed pink. 

“I don’t understand why you’re confused,” Erik says honestly, wrapping his arms around Charles’ back and rolling his head back to look at him over the slow oh his own cheekbone, lazy and aware he’s being deliberately sensual. “You’re physically healthy enough, and the adrenaline of battle should almost always draw this out. Have you really not been hard in years?” 

Unable to escape Erik’s stronger arms, Charles slumps instead against his chest, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “As I said, I haven’t had any sexual impulses. Adrenaline-induced erections aren’t always about sexual release. Just endorphins activating an increases blood-rush to—“

“Must you rationalize everything away?” Erik interrupts, irritated. “Can’t it just be as easy as to say, ‘the physical rush gets me excited’? You think too much, Charles.” 

“ _You’re_ not excited,” Charles points out a little petulantly. 

“That was a pathetic training session. I’m _frustrated_. Besides, I have some measure of control over it considering it’s something I’m used to dealing with, as opposed to your case.” 

“So I’m the blushing virgin,” Charles mumbles, rolling his eyes, and then stops, and grins. “You know, that morning before they left Logan called me on the phone.” 

Erik arches his brows, “How’s Logan fallen into a conversation about how you get hard?” 

Charles tugs harshly at a damp strand of hair near Erik’s forehead, giving him a caustic look. 

“What did dear Logan need, _sweetheart?_ ” Erik asks sweetly, smiling like a wolf about to eat a lamb. 

“Wanker. Logan, who is very nice when he’s not being a homicidal psychopath, thank you very much—“

“Charles, we _talked_ about this. Lying isn’t nice.” 

“Oh, bugger, Logan was right, you _are_ an unworthy bloody asshole.” 

Erik laughs out loud. Charles curses again in his dainty English way and drops his head heavily to Erik’s clavicle. 

“He called to let you know you ought to defend your honor?” Erik teases, slipping his hands casually inside Charles’ sweatshirt to splay on the long curve of his back, where the sweat of the training session if beginning to cool. He’s rewarded with a pleased sigh and a shiver. 

“He’s convinced you want to pin me down and, um, have your way with me.” 

_Not far off the mark_ , Erik thinks, but he asks, “Was that the term he used?” 

“No, of course not. You know Logan.” 

“Well, what was the precise expression?”

He probably enjoys too much the way Charles can blush. It’s truly unbelievable that his short English upbringing up until the point he met Shaw has made such a deep impression that even to this day, Charles behaves quite British indeed. Charles has said he hardly remembers his father, but surely that must be a misinterpretation of a blurry childhood. Charles is not Shaw’s child, so he must be someone else’s, and Mathias Lehnsherr was never a man to be proper and shy. There is something of Francis Xavier there still. 

“Right. He said that you meant to fuck me until I was sweating come.” 

Erik laughs so hard he has to let go of Charles to bend over. The telepath swats the back of his head, but Erik can tell his annoyance is only a mockery, hardly there at all and dissipating quickly. 

“Maybe that’s your forth mutation,” he gasps, and when Charles means to shove him he catches his arm and brings him down to the floor with him, only half-remembering to pillow Charles’ head with his hand so it won’t hit the concrete. Charles has a delicate head and ferocious, spontaneous migraines can be triggered with the ease of a breath. Erik can be more sympathetic of those now that he understands how they feel, so he has the heart to attempt to prevent them. 

Erik settles his longer body on top of Charles, not minding in the least that he’s crushing him because he’s much heavier. The other man pushes at him half-heartedly, but there’s a curl to his lip and he relaxes easily when Erik slides an arm under his head and bends down to claim his mouth. The German smiles into the kiss and rolls his hips pointedly. Charles jumps, startled, and clutches as Erik’s free arm. 

“Just relax,” Erik murmurs against Charles’ lips. “It probably won’t take very long.” 

He stills momentarily, pulling back to look down seriously at Charles, cheeks flushed and pupils blown, lips parted. 

“Or do you want me to stop and let you do it yourself?” 

Charles bites his bottom lip, suddenly shy. “Don’t stop.” 

Erik smiles, settling his weight once again against Charles’ body as he surges down to catch Charles lips again. Charles arches eagerly up into the kiss, bringing his arm around to the back of Erik’s neck to bring him even closer. Erik rolls his hips in a slow, lazy motion, feeling the way Charles grows even harder through the combined layers of his sweatpants and underwear. Erik himself is quickly rising to the occasion. 

Charles is honestly attempting not to writhe in pleasure, which amuses Erik because, clearly, it’s an all-powerful effort that is taking too much out of the telepath. 

“Just let it happen,” he breathes on Charles ear, and without a moment of hesitation lifts himself up, reaches down to wrap a hand around Charles’ knee and draw his leg up and out, to seat himself between Charles’ thighs. Charles hips move in an abortive thrust that Charles quickly controls. Vindictive, Erik presses down harshly and makes Charles moan loudly. 

“Stop holding back,” he gasps, swallowing. His own climax is mounting, which is ridiculous given the small amount of stimulation and time, but it’s mounting nonetheless, and he wants to get Charles off first. It shouldn’t be this difficult; Charles should be fit to burst. But he’s scared and holding back against the loss of control, and it’s warring against his arousal and the urge to come. 

“Charles, stop—“

“Touch me,” Charles gasps, eyes flying open suddenly. He arches up to kiss Erik deeply, wrapping a hand around Erik’s wrist and leading it insistently down to his own stomach. “Please. _Erik_.”

Erik grins, “With pleasure,” he purrs, shifts himself slightly to the side and lifts himself up enough only to wrap his fingers around the waistband of Charles’ sweatpants and pull them down enough that he can reach into his underwear and—

He’s not sure anyone’s spine should be able to arch at that angle. Erik’s been with men who weren’t cut before and he’s relieved Charles isn’t, because it means they can skip the immediate problem of lubrication. His own erection can wait for the moment, relieved somewhat by the steady pressure of Charles’ thigh. 

Erik bends down again to kiss Charles deeply, thrilled at the fevered motions of the telepath’s body under his, now quickly reaching the point where he’s not trying to hold back anymore. Charles returns his kisses with delicious urgency, struggling to breathe in short puffs and pants, alternatively moaning and whining. Erik’s always been a silent type of lover, something people often find unnerving, but Charles doesn’t seem to mind. Erik’s own heavy breathing alone seems to be erotic enough for the telepath. 

Erik is right—it doesn’t take long before Charles surges up, hides his face in the crook of Erik’s shoulder and neck and comes, so hard that his throat closes and he doesn’t even whine. What Erik isn’t expecting is the way Charles climax crashes over him through their link and drag him along, pushing him messily over the edge before he was ready, so abruptly it nearly hurts. 

Erik relaxes until he’s sprawled halfway over Charles pliant body and focuses on breathing and getting his heartbeat back to a normal rate. Charles is out like a light, and no wonder. Eris is kind enough to get up, reach for a towel and do whatever he can to make them both presentable. 

It isn’t much, because Charles has come all over the both of them and Erik’s own semen is cooling disgustingly in his underwear, but he figures he fights the good fight. 

Charles comes to halfway through it anyway, and squeaks weakly at the roughness of the towel over his sensitive cock. 

“Oh,” he breathes when he realizes what Erik is doing. He leans up on his elbows, all long lines and lazy satisfaction, full lips red and kiss-swollen. He looks positively wrecked. Erik thinks it’s a good look on him. “Thank you, love. I’m sorry I blacked out on you.”

“Hm,” Erik means to say something, but Charles sits up fully to smooth his hair back tenderly and kiss him in the mouth. Charles nearly always ends his kisses by pressing one more, chaste peck on Erik’s lips, smiling. It’s a habit that he’s evidently picked up from Erik, and while at the beginning it was slightly off-putting, Erik has to admit that he’s warmed to it. 

“It’ll pass,” Charles promises as he disentangles himself to stand, offering Erik a hand up. “Soon I’ll be my own man again.” 

“What will happen when you touch other people, now that you’ve anchored yourself?” Erik asks curiously. 

“Well, I haven’t yet achieved it completely. I’d rather not risk it at the moment. But theoretically, if everything’s gone aright, as it seems to have, I should be able to soon be in contact with anyone, as I was as a child. As… a normal person ought to be, I suppose.” 

Erik smiles, “Ororo will be happy. She’s been itching to hug you, and since she can’t she uses all of her instincts on me. I don’t like hugging.” 

Charles laughs indulgently and pointedly wraps his arms around Erik’s torso from behind, undeterred when the taller man makes no effort to return the embrace. 

_You spectacular liar,_ Charles thinks fondly, pressing a kiss to the side of Erik’s neck before releasing him. 

“I am going to shower. It’s your turn to cook,” Charles calls out as he runs exuberantly up the stairs, leaping neatly over two or even three steps. “Be creative. No _chucrut_!” 

“It’s healthy food!” Erik gripes, scoffing. “I eat your tasteless English food, the least you can do is tolerate my German traditions.” 

_You absolutely hate fish and chips, you giant toddler._

_As well I should, it makes my stomach turn. I’m making gulash and you’re eating it, and should I hear one noise of complaint, we’ll have potato mash until Moira comes back._

Laugh isn’t really a sound inside the mind, but there’s an undeniable feeling of merry amusement and contentment flooding through Erik’s thoughts like liquid light, warm and honest. 

Erik showers much quicker than Charles. By the time the telepath comes down, carrying a few folders and papers with him to spread on the kitchen table, Erik is already working on preparing dinner. Charles grades papers, pours over essays with admirable focus as Erik deftly maneuvers several knives and utensils to work on the ingredients. 

Erik has a split second of contentment as he realizes how ridiculously domestic it all is, and a second later he thinks, darkly, _It can’t last._

Charles looks up and catches his eyes, face serious, brows pulled together. Erik expect him to say nothing bad will happen, that they’re safe here in Xavier Hall, that life will go on as it is now, with the both of them together and all of the children, and Ororo will continue to be preternaturally wise and Logan will get even more blunt and rough-spoken. 

Charles says—nothing. 

“No,” Erik says wryly, reaching over to rest his hand lightly on Charles’ shoulder. “I suppose not.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's just occurred to me that some of you might have subscribed to this. I apologize for the chapter spam XD I finally sat down to edit for posting and since this story is technically finished in LJ, I thought I'd just... put it up. I swear this is the last one today! I'll keep going tomorrow.

Erik sleeps, and in his dream he’s sitting under the sun in a vast green field, cross-legged. The scent of fresh grass newly torn fills his nostrils, the sunlight makes him squint. At his side sit someone, taller, broader. 

A rich, deep voice read from the book in the man’s hands, _You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!_

The man turns, eyes bluer than the sky, hair dark as night. He towers over Erik like a statue, handsome and calm and kind. 

This is Erik’s father, except it’s not. This is not Erik’s dream, either. 

_Oh. So you do remember him._

Another dream, wrapped in memories. 

Sunlight makes Charles blind as he looks up, but Francis leans down and scoops the boy up in his arms, smoothing down his hair lovingly with a big hand. His lips don’t move, but he says:

_What do we do when we fall, Charles?_

He has the reins of the horse in his other hand. 

The boy hides his face in the man’s neck, shivering. 

_I’ll count to five_ , Francis says. _You can be scared for five seconds, son. And when I say five, you’ll be brave for me again. Can you do that, Charles?_

_You can do anything you want, Charles_ , Francis says and he sits to the piano bench, his son between his legs, toddler fingers reaching shyly for the ivory keys. _You can be anything you want, if you want it bad enough, and you work hard enough._

_I want to be like you._

_I want you to be yourself_ , Francis’ laugh is clear and frank, loud. _I’ll be proud and love you always, son._

_But you don’t know what I’ll be when I’m older._

_You’ll be my son_ , Francis’ eyes are Charles’, but playful, bright. And no one else’s. 

Francis says, _five_. 

Erik wakes. 

Momentarily disoriented, he swallows and focuses on the wall right in front of him. The shift between the scenes of the dream and the reality has left him off-balance. Charles sleeps; he can feel the low, comforting murmur of his mind at rest, at the back of his own consciousness. Erik shifts, sits up and runs a hand through his hair. 

Charles is sleeping on his stomach, face turned towards Erik, breathing slow and even. 

Erik glances out the window. It’s still dark outside, the dead of night. He knows he won’t fall asleep again; he can still smell the grass and the horsehair as if they were smeared across his the skin of his hands. He can feel the shift of the muscles on a horses’ back beneath his thighs, feel the roughness of the hair he clung to as a child. 

Erik’s never ridden a horse in his life. 

Hesitating for only a moment, Erik leans down and combs his fingers gently through Charles’ hair, much the way Francis had done. The way the man relaxes even further into the bed with a sigh is almost painful. 

_You shouldn’t project into me,_ he thinks quietly. _Those are your memories, private and intimate. You don’t need to share everything with me._

Charles mind resolves itself into something like lucidity with some effort. He shifts, blinking his eyes open sleepily before propping his upper body up on his elbows. His back makes a rather fascinating curve, but Erik ignored the urge to touch, because he can instantly tell that Charles is troubled. 

“What is it?” he asks urgently, spreading out his senses to all the metal in the house, tracking down unusual movements, shifts in bits of his awareness. 

“I didn’t know I still had those,” Charles says, eyes wide. “I told you. I don’t remember him.” 

Erik frowns, “But it was very vivid. I felt like I was right _there_.” 

“You _were_ ,” Charles sits up uneasily, eyes flitting around and mind spiraling slowly into panic. “Because I was. But—those memories, God, I haven’t seen them in… not since before he died. I didn’t remember them. They were lost.” Erik isn’t sure he understands what has Charles so freaked out. 

“Well, all the better,” he shrugs. “It’s good you remember. He’s your father.” 

Charles throws the covers off and stands impatiently, brushing his hair away from his face with shaking fingers. Erik carefully follows him out of the bed, unsure of what precisely is going on. 

“They were supposed to be lost,” Charles insists. “I’m not supposed to be able to remember him.” 

Erik crosses his arms, frowning. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He kept telling me I was his creature, calling me _son_ ,” Charles growls. “I _knew_ he wasn’t my father, but Shaw, he—he knew how to get under my skin and twist everything up, _exactly_ what to do to ruin me. He made me tell him about Francis and then he’d do what Francis used to do and—“

Charles stops, hugs himself tightly as if the room were cold against his bare skin, and turns to Erik again, eyes wide. 

“I had to lock it away. I had to forget, or else I’d lose it all to Shaw, do you see?” 

Erik rubs his temple, “You—what, repressed memories of Francis to protect them?” 

“It was Raven’s idea,” Charles nods. “It worked surprisingly well, except Shaw wasn’t very pleased.”

“How much did he,” Erik waves a hand, uncertain. “get?”

“Oh, not bloody much,” Charles sighs, shoulders slumping. “Even the little he could learn he twisted to well out of shape it became completely alien to me. But still—that’s not the point, Erik. The point is I didn’t unlock those, so what are they doing in our dreams?”

Erik shrugs, “It’s not like it was mental scarring material, Charles. They were good memories. It’s not—“

“Erik,” Charles cuts right through, almost plaintive. “I have a very tenuous grasp on sanity on a good day, and a large part of that depends on me being able to lock those memories away until Shaw is dead and I am certain, absolutely certain, that he will not use them to harm me.” 

Erik reaches forward and catches Charles’ wrist, grip firm and eyes serious. “You said it yourself. We’re something else entirely now. Shaw won’t have as easy a time scrambling your mind as he did in the past, not with _mine_ setting up the guidelines.”

All of a sudden, Erik remembers he’s a man, almost thirty, that he’s lived a full live riddled with both good and bad things, whereas Charles might be only four years younger but is certainly still very much a child in many things. 

Charles’ eyes cut up to him sharply, and the man seems to titter uncertainly on the edge, torn between being offended and finding the whole thing endearing. The threat of one of Charles frequent and dangerous mood swings makes Erik brace himself, but just as he does Charles settles down, relaxing against him. Erik brings his hand up to squeeze the back of his neck reassuringly, sighing. 

_You have your own mood swings_ , he protests weakly. 

_I never say I was anything like stable_ , Erik shrugs. _But at least with me you know to predict I’ll be angry, as it’s my reaction to most things._

_How very self-aware. You must be very proud of yourself._ Charles’ voice sounds more than a little petulant, and Erik thinks, _that doesn’t make you sound immature at all._

_You think me childish?_ Charles looks up, playful and amused, blue eyes bright. He _is_ his father’s son, and no one else’s.

_Boyish_ , Erik concedes, bowing his head to kiss Charles in the mouth. 

“What was he reading?” Erik asks, smiling when Charles pushes him gently towards the bed, dipping curious fingers well below the waistband of Erik’s boxers. Charles squeezes and Erik gasps, swelling obligingly. It’s not as if it takes much to get Erik going, especially considering he’s been celibate since he arrived at the mansion, despite Charles’ frequent, careless innuendos. 

“Hm? Oh. ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.”

Erik thought that was a strange choice for a young boy, and perhaps Francis might have been rushing Charles education just a little—then he remembers, brusquely, that Francis has spoken without moving his lips. 

He snaps his head up, eyes wide. 

“Your father was a telepath.” 

Charles goes still. 

“Yes,” he says warily, eyeing Erik as if unsure as to how the man will take this. “He was the one that helped me build my shields, before Shaw tore them down.” 

“Does he know?” Erik sits up, wrapping his arms around Charles’ waist as the man sits above him. Charles hesitates and finally settles down, hissing a little when their erections grind. 

“Shaw? No. I contained it before he got that far.”

Erik is absolutely fascinated. “How powerful was he? Do you think he was on par with yourself? Would your children also be telepaths?”

Charles looks half-way between being amused and being irritated. “Why? Is your secondary mutation getting pregnant? Because if that’s the case, why, I think I should probably be on top all the time. Think of the _scientific research_ , Erik.” 

Erik laughs and manhandles Charles down onto the mattress, where he drops down on top of him comfortably, completely disregarding the air in Charles’ lungs. 

_You inconsiderate oaf_ , Charles admonishes, pushing at Erik’s shoulders until the taller man lifts himself up on his elbows. 

_You love it_ , Erik retorts, biting Charles’ bottom lip. Charles arches his back, rolling his hips sinfully into Erik’s and enjoying the faint gasp it gets him. 

_Yes_ , he thinks quietly, _Yes, I do._

That’s possibly the closest they’ll ever get to hearing it said between them, and Erik thinks that’s fine, and he obligingly falls to his side to let Charles take the lead, this time. With startling confidence, possibly stemming from the fact that Erik hasn’t yet rejected his advances even once, Charles nudges at the inside of Erik’s knee, spreading his legs and falling perfectly in place between his thighs. 

“Shit,” Erik hisses sharply, head snapping up to kiss Charles. He can feel the swirl of Charles arousal skating hot against his own, braiding them together and spiraling—

Erik tugs urgently at Charles’ hair, panting. “Don’t, stop—you’re going to push me over too quickly again, pull back a little.” 

After a brief hesitation Charles does just that, folding back, peeling himself away even as he settles heavily on Erik’s hips. 

“Not _that_ much,” Erik growls impatiently. 

“Make up your fucking mind,” Charles returns harshly, snapping his hips sharply and making Erik grunt. 

“You’re a fucking telepath, _figure it out_.” 

“I want to hear you say it, Erik,” Charles breathes, biting at Erik’s earlobe. “Tell me. I’ll give you whatever, but just _tell_ me—“

“Your mouth,” Erik says almost immediately. He leans up and grabs Charles’ face, staring into his eyes intensely. Impulsively, he snaps closer and kisses Charles hard enough to hurt, just shy of breaking skin. He’s somewhat surprised at the ferocity of the feeling, considering it’s all his now that Charles has withdrawn almost entirely from his mind. 

Charles grins, and Erik catches the disturbing end of a thought that sounds something like _I’m really good at that_ and almost takes it back, except Charles is already lifting off his body and reaching down, eager and pleased. 

There’s not much room to complain after that. Charles really _is_ good at it, and Erik would be worried, but he can feel the low hum at the shores of his awareness that tells him Charles is especially pleased to do this for _Erik_ , that he’s here in mind and body and thinking of no one else. 

When Erik is finally sated, loose-limbed on the bed and struggling to breathe, Charles bends over him smugly and kisses his cheek chastely. Erik snaps aware enough to reach into Charles’ underwear, only to find the telepath’s already finished as well. 

_Did I drag you with me?_ Erik asks vaguely. 

Charles makes a sound of contented agreement as he settles on the bed, hugging Erik close. 

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Erik sits up, batting away grabby hands. “If I let you get a hold of me I’ll never get up again, you sleep like the dead and it’s easier to get rid of an anaconda.”

Charles looks abashed, but blinks in slow amusement. He’s obviously drowsy, and rather unwilling to start on an argument now. Unfortunately he’s blinking those huge eyes and his lips are cherry-red, cheeks flushed and—

“Oh, goddamnit—lay back. _Lay back_.” 

Charles obeys, laying down on his back and blinking owlishly as Erik rearranges himself so he is lying sprawled half over him, sharing his pillow, right arm curled around Charles’ chest so his hand splays over the man’s ribs. 

“Happy now?” he grumbles. 

“Where’s the romance?” Charles complains for the sake of it, turning his head to face Erik, eyes closed. 

“Dead,” Erik retorts. “Now sleep.” 

Charles is out like a light. Erik shifts a little, slightly uncomfortable with the heat they are sharing at the expanse of skin in contact, but he has to admit the proximity is nice. Erik has had his fair share of lovers and bed-mates, but he’s never really shared anything with them. Unless you count the fluids. 

He breathes in, finding some measure of comfort in the scent of Charles’ skin so close to his nose, and allows himself to relax and fall asleep. 

Erik rarely moves in his sleep, so he is not surprised to find himself in the same position he fell asleep in, half draped over Charles. Charles is sleep-warm and sleeping more deeply than he has in years. 

Erik thinks this is, probably, the reason he hasn’t picked up on the mind of the person slipping announced into his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. 

But Erik is awake and lucid, and his hand is moving, very slowly, imperceptibly, towards the knife he keeps beneath Charles’ pillow, at the same time the knife moves, equally slowly, towards him—until metal and skin meet, and his fingers curl around the long hilt. 

He hasn’t moved his body a single inch, besides his hand, and he lets his eyes fall closed again, searching for metal scattered on the body of their attacker. He finds none—not even a wrist-watch. Whoever’s here knows well what he can do, and has taken precautions. 

Erik shifts, moving his leg so it lies across Charles’ thighs. That should give him the chance to leap over the telepath when the time comes, should Charles fail to wake. Now it’s all about the perfect timing and striking before the attacker moves to hurt them. Erik waits, controlling his breath, muscles loose and relaxed. 

The attacker stands over the bed now, looming over them. 

Charles shifts slightly, turning his face in towards Erik’s. 

There is a long, calm moment of silence. Nothing happens. Erik knows their attacker can’t see his knife, hidden beneath the curve of Charles’ shoulder, so that can’t be what’s stalling their hand. 

It’s a risk, but a calculated one. He’s lying almost over Charles, so the telepath is largely safe from harm while Erik is exposed, awake and ready to fight. He opens his eyes and cuts his gaze up to—

Raven. 

They stare at each other for a moment, both very still. Raven arches a brow. 

Erik shifts up to an elbow, reaching over to place the knife on the nightstand on Charles’ side of the bed. He sits up and moves the covers, but when he makes to move away Charles stirs, protesting sleepily the loss of warmth. Erik leans down over him, brushing back a lock of dark hair and smoothing the pad of his thumb down Charles’ sensitive temple.

“It’s fine. Go back to sleep,” he murmurs. 

Charles sinks back into oblivion. 

Erik removes the covers entirely and gets out of bed, unashamed of his nudity. He has to look around briefly to find his briefs and pants, but even then it’s done quickly enough. He’s truly in no hurry to get dressed. Raven’s walked into her brother’s bedroom to find Erik draped over the man in question, both of them naked. It’s clear she knows the situation. The only reason he’s even getting dressed is because if he’s to have this conversation with his lover’s sister, he’d sooner not have with his cock within her easy reach. Besides, Raven _never_ wears clothes around the house. 

They slip silently out into the study, where Erik fishes for and easily finds his cigarettes and lighter even as he nudges the door closed with his mind. He leans his hips against the desk and crosses his arms, giving Raven a level look. 

They stare at each other. 

Erik blows smoke through his nostrils.

Raven smiles, “So, you had your way with him after all.”

Erik frowns slightly, “More like we had our way with each other—but I’d like to assume you didn’t get me out of bed to inquire on the details of your brother’s sexual life, Raven.” 

“Well, no.”

Raven crosses her arms, stares out the window carelessly. Erik waits for her to tell him what she needs to say, and when she makes no move to speak, he clears his throat. 

“Do you remember your father, Raven?” he asks gently. 

The girl looks at him from the corner of her eye, watchful, “A little. Why?” 

“Charles—sort of repressed his memories of him, to protect them. Says it was a failsafe to make sure Shaw didn’t break everything in his mind. I was wondering if he might have done the same with you, just in case.” 

“Interesting,” Raven says flatly. 

Erik shakes his head, bemused and growing alarmed. “Raven, is something wrong? Should we wake Charles and—“

“He’ll be awake in a minute,” Raven says breezily. She steps closer to pluck the cigarette from his lips. Bewildered by the action, Erik doesn’t sense her movement until it is too late—until the needle has pierced the skin of his wrist, and his limb starts quickly to grow numb. He glances down and sees the smooth bone needle in her fingers. 

He stumbles away from her, mind reeling. He can feel panic rising, clotting up his throat, and is aware of the exact second it snaps Charles awake as if his mind had been set on fire. 

“Why?” Erik asks hoarsely, blinking as the room begins to swim in his eyes. 

“You really _have_ ruined him,” Raven says, and then she’s not Raven anymore.

“You tore down all the defenses he built around himself,” Emma Frost says, and she drops his cigarette to crush with the heel of her boot on the carpet. She tilts her head in a lovely manner, “Thank you, sweetheart.” 

Everything in the room, in the manor, that is metal, twists and bends out of shape. The glass panes in every window explode outwards under the pressure of their bending frames, door mechanisms shatter they wood they are concealed within. 

Charles’ mind spikes and shuts down abruptly, leaving behind a ringing, painful silence as the connection between them withers and dies. 

Frost smiles, comes closer and pushes, with the top of her boot, at Erik’s right hip, forcing a misbalance that his him falling on his back on the floor. His body hardly responds to him anymore, muscles clumsy and numb. The metal is quiet around him, and Charles is gone, gone _gone_ —

“Why, dear. You did all the work for us, didn’t you?” 

The door to the bedroom opens, and Sebastian Shaw leans against the doorframe, cool blue eyes hard as his mouth smiles. Behind him, Erik can see a tall man leaning over the bed, skin fire-red and hair-ink black. He straightens and has Charles in his arms, arms dangling limp and careless. A puff of smoke and he’s gone. 

“Hello, little Erik,” says Shaw. “Fancy meeting you here.” 

Thankfully, Erik blacks out.


	14. Chapter 14

He snaps out of sleep abruptly, disoriented and flooded by a crippling sense of dislocation. Briefly he makes a cursory analysis of his body and finds everything working in an acceptable manner. His head feels like it’s full of cotton, his eyelids are heavy and he feels drowsy and unpleasant, blood running cold and quick in his veins. But he’s fine. Or at least he has all his limbs which, considering he’s in Shaw’s clutches again, counts as fine enough. 

Shaw’s clutches. 

Erik is proud to say he’s being remarkably calm about this. Maybe it’s the drug. 

What really makes him start into spiraling terror is the absolute lack of activity at the other end of his link with Charles. So he turns his mind away from that for now, swallowing against the dread and focusing on evaluating his own situation. 

He’s in an octagonal room, floor and ceiling and floor-to ceiling walls covered in mirrors. He lies on a ceramic table with wooden legs, strapped to it by leather and plastic buckles. At first glance he thinks it should be easy enough to break the plastic and escape, but then he thinks the better of it. Shaw’s never been that stupid. 

Erik and Charles, on the other hand, have had plenty of stupidity. He can’t believe he didn’t see this coming—how could they be so moronic as to allow this to happen? Frost was right, how could he just have disregarded all the barriers Charles had put between himself and Shaw? And how in the world could Charles have simply _let him_?

He shifts uncomfortably in the table and sighs, relaxing his muscles. There’s no point in expending necessary energy either struggling or regretting. What’s done is done—now they have to get out of here. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out; he feels lethargic and slow, mind and muscles clumsy. But that’s not an indicative of how long the drug might have lasted.

He lays on the table for a long time, attempting to calm down and simultaneously think clearly of a way to get them both out of this mess, but his mind keeps getting dragged down, like there is an abyss, a hole at the bottom of the pool sucking out all the water he swims in. 

_Charles_ , he sends out tentatively, wincing at the ringing silence, spiking occasionally to stabs of pain. _Charles, are you there?_

No answer.

Erik takes a deep breath and pushes forcefully against the shields Charles has erected between them, half-finished and porous, more membranes than walls. They’re flexible enough to bend to his will, but he can’t break through them. He’s not as skilled as playing with their mind-places as Charles is. 

_Charles_ , he tries to raise his mental voice, thinking maybe more noise will attract attention, but he still gets nothing. It’s like there’s a black hole in his head. 

Impatiently and fighting rising dread, Erik turns away from it again. Only it’s not as easy this time—it feels like it’s pulling him down, dragging him, clutching at his own mind and calling out to it. There’s no consciousness there, Erik can sense, so whatever’s happening isn’t Charles deliberate doing. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think Charles subconsciously misses the connection, but it feels more chaotic than that and Erik’s afraid of what Charles unconscious, drugged mind might be like, so he fights it. 

He realizes he’s stuck somewhere between his mind and the black hole and horror claws at his consciousness, breaking off bits and pieces of the calm he’d fought so hard to find. 

A distant voice says, _one_. 

Erik blinks and, now in front of him, is Francis Xavier. 

“I’ve gone mad,” Erik rubs his forehead. 

_Ever the optimist_ , Francis smiles Charles’ smile, though his lips are different and he’s taller even than Erik. 

“How would you know? You’re dead.” 

_I am not Francis Xavier_ , Francis Xavier says. _I am a projection of the subconscious._

“Why would my mind take on _your_ form?” Erik asks suspiciously. 

_It hasn’t, dear boy. Your subconscious is not the only force around here._

“Where’s Charles?” Erik demands. Francis arches black brows so Erik waves a hand, dismissive. “The rest of Charles.”

_Around here… somewhere, I should think. Dormant._

“Why am I conscious and he’s, as you say, dormant?”

_You are hardly conscious, Erik. I would not be here if you were conscious. As you said, I am dead. And I should think we would not be in your old home in Poland._

Erik looks around, startled to find they are, indeed, in the living room of the small house in Poland. The window is open to let in the afternoon breeze. In the armchair near the open door sits a newspaper, hastily folded. He can almost hear his father’s dry laugh. 

_We are very different men_ , Francis says, thoughtful. Pun intended, probably. 

“I still don’t understand.”

_Then pay attention._

In the background he can hear, _two._

“Why is Charles gone?”

_You unlocked too many things, Erik. Charles made a possibly fatal miscalculation. He thought you tend to naturally repress. That is not the case. You fixate, you obsess, but you don’t lock away. In the… communion, as you might call it, of your minds, what Charles had counted would serve as a dam actually turned into a key._

“What did I set free?” Erik asks, wary. 

_Me_ , Francis smiles. 

“I don’t understand how—“

_You have the weapon you need_ , Francis says, reaching up to flick a lock of dark hair back away from his startlingly blue Charles-eyes, beaming a smile that his son has never smiled. _You need only learn how to use it._

“Charles?” Erik asks, dubious, and Francis fades and Charles voice says _Yes. I’m here._

Erik can feel himself begin to relax. 

“Where the hell were you?”

_Gone. I—don’t know. Not here. Not—I couldn’t find you. I thought you were dead._

“Wouldn’t you _know?_ ”

_I’ve no idea_ , Charles answers helplessly. 

Erik sighs, and just as he is about to say something suddenly everything is yanked out of focus. The house in Poland falls to pieces around him, and—

He’s in a mirrored room strapped to a table. His cheek stings. Shaw looms over him, and smiles. 

“Welcome back, Erik. Have a pleasant rest?”

Erik thinks there aren’t words in any language created by humankind to express the hatred he feels for this man. All he find suitable to do is gather saliva and spit fiercely in Shaw’s face. The man straightens with a put-upon sigh, as if he was dealing with an unruly child, and wipes his face with the carefully folded handkerchief that had been peeking out of his suit jacket. 

“Really, Erik, I thought we were past this.” 

Erik realizes he’s shaking with fury. With some effort he manages to control the twitching of his muscles and exert some measure of control over his reeling mind. Tentatively he reaches out and realizes, once again, that Charles has abandoned him. 

“Where is he?” he demands, just barely curving the urge to bare his teeth like an animal. 

“Miss him already? You two children seem to have grown quite close. You should thank me for training him so well for you. Talented, isn’t he?” 

Erik drags a breath through his nostrils, loud and long, and attempts to think with something resembling rationality. 

“I’m not surprised about Charles, of course, but I have to say I never noticed any such inclination in you, Erik. I wish I would have known. I could have helped you with that.” 

“I’d have rather been castrated,” Erik snaps. 

“All that would have done would be preventing you from enjoying it,” Shaw replies, arching a brow. 

All Erik wants to know is where Charles is and what’s being done to him, but he knows Shaw won’t answer and he’s not foolish enough to insist. The more Shaw realizes they care for each other the more he’ll use them against one another. All they can hope for at this point is maybe convincing Shaw that what’s between them is just sex. Hopefully Charles will think the same and angle for the same strategy. 

He can’t make sure, though, because Charles _is gone._

“So, Erik,” Shaw starts conversationally, crossing his arms. “Want to tell me precisely how you came to be in Xavier Hall?”

“Charles and I have some common ground to cover,” Erik says flatly. 

“Ah. See, isn’t that nice? I always do try to make mutants come together. Think of it this way; if not for me, you’d have never met. And I know you must be glad—I put some effort in making Charles exquisite.” 

Now Erik knows for sure that Shaw is baiting him. 

“Yes,” he drawls. “He has quite the tongue.”

Shaw smiles that nasty little smile that means he’s not getting what he wants from Erik, and Erik will regret it shortly. 

“Have you fucked him yet? It’s so nice, tight and hot. He tends to bleed, but he hardly complains anymore.”

Erik has a split-second wave of fury, wondering if Shaw’s laid a single finger on Charles and God, what he will do to him if he does—then he remember he’s just spoken to Charles, and he sounded wary but normal enough. He could not have hidden that from Erik—could he?

“He didn’t bleed with me,” Erik lies, and smiles like a wound. “Maybe you’re just not good at it.” 

“Hm,” Shaw makes a thoughtful sound, and Erik gets the unpleasant sensation than more than goading him, he just gave Shaw an idea. 

“I wonder if you’d bleed,” Shaw says silkily, taping the tips of his fingers slowly on the bare flesh of Erik’s chest. Erik has to greet his teeth with the effort not to flinch or swallow. 

“I’m a little old for your tastes,” he grits out. 

“Well, yes. But you know, I’ve learned to the only way to deal with an unruly Charles is to make him realize what the consequences of his disobedience are on the ones he cares about. And he’s been especially unruly, now—he won’t even wake up.” 

Ah. So that was it. Charles has shut down until he can control himself enough not to fall into chaotic panic when faced with Shaw. 

“Any tips on how to bring him around?” Shaw asks genially. 

“You could shoot yourself in the groin,” Erik replies just as nicely. “I don’t think that would wake him but what a favor to the Universe it would be, _Sebastian_.”

Shaw smiles and pats him on the chest. 

“You’ll come around.”

He leans comfortably against the side of Erik’s table, running the pads of his fingers teasingly over the faded ink of the Auschwitz tattoo. Now Erik does flinch, unable to help himself. 

“I really am sorry about what happened in the camps, son,” Shaw says regretfully. 

“I am not your fucking son,” Erik spits, lifting his head to glare at Shaw as fiercely as he can, given his position. “I am Mathias Lehnsherr’s son, and you _made me bury my mother_.”

“You’re still on about that?” Shaw blinks. “That was a long time ago, Erik.” 

“You’re still on about me?” Erik replies harshly. “That was a twelve years ago, Sebastian.”

Shaw reaches up to pat Erik’s cheek soothingly, and the German has the most violent impulse to bite his fingers and thrash until they come off. Only the unlikeliness of the result keeps him back from doing it. 

“You’re the one that got away,” Shaw says gently. 

Erik drops his head back tiredly and closes his eyes. 

“Truth be told,” Shaw continues. “I never did meet your father. He was already dead by the time I found you, as you know.” He considers for a moment. “I did meet Francis Xavier, once.”

Erik opens his eyes, stares at his reflection in the ceiling. 

“Francis was a telepath. Not very powerful, nothing spectacular, but he’d trained himself well. And he had wonderful genes, obviously, and I don’t mean just the amazing blue eyes.” 

“Jealous?” Erik asks flatly. 

Shaw smiles, “I’m only bringing up Francis because Emma has this most fascinating idea about subconscious shielding and telepathic self-mutilation. What was it you said in the manor about Charles repressing memories?”

Erik gives him a flat, bored look. 

“Are you planning on boring me to death, or will you start torturing me any time soon? Time’s a-ticking, Sebastian, and our absence is bound to be noticed soon.” 

Shaw waves a hand. “You dear children won’t be going back until tomorrow, and even then, the chances of them finding you are low enough to be inconsequential.” 

Tomorrow. It was Thursday, then—the children were meant to return on Friday. Shaw was right, the chances of the children finding them were slim, but even then they’d know something had gone wrong—Erik had nearly destroyed the manor with his gift and there were several animal-type mutants in the student body that would smell unfamiliar presences in the house. It was _something_. 

“So, Francis,” Shaw insisted. “Interesting man, hm?”

All of a sudden, Shaw and the room fall completely quiet. 

_Tell him_ , Charles urges, voice firm and calm, and oh, thank the Lord, he is back to his usual composed self. 

_But you said he mustn’t know about—_

_It doesn’t matter anymore, he knows, he’ll rip me to shreds anyway. I need you to make him understand that he won’t access the memories unless Frost forces my mind. Convince him._

_You want me to tell him to throw Frost on you and make her attack you? Have you gone mad?_

_Erik, to get to the repressed spot she will have to get under my shields. I’m stronger than her, if I have her in my playfield I can kill her from the inside out, but I need her to attack me. Send her my way._

_I don’t think that’s—_

_You don’t understand_ , Charles says, almost desperately. _She has to be gone. Things have changed. I made a mistake. What I had thought to do before won’t work._

_What mistake? Charles, what—_

Erik’s lip is split and bleeding. He blinks, focuses back on Shaw. 

“Am I boring you, Erik?” he asks viciously. “Looked like you feel asleep there a second.”

“What do you want from me?” Erik asks in a monotone. “I don’t have anything that might help you. All I know of Francis is that he liked to read and he rode horses.”

“Ah, but I know you must know a bit more than that, Erik. He kept his son very well guarded from me for a long time, so I know he must have been a good enough father. My question then is why Charles is repressing him so fiercely. Any ideas?”

Erik thinks of ways to make Shaw sic Frost on Charles. Something that would make the man absolutely ravenous to break through Charles’ formidable shields. It wasn’t as easy as just revealing something either; Shaw would suspect if he just up and spilled his guts. Erik had a record of being particularly uncooperative, and his last few years away from Shaw had done nothing but deepen the roots of that reputation. 

Conveniently enough, one didn’t need to make a great effort to get Shaw to resort to torture. 

“Ask nicely,” Erik says, licking at the blood on his bottom lip. 

Shaw’s smile is slow and sly.


End file.
